The Wentworths

One of the driving themes behind The Wentworths was the destructive and redemptive nature of family.

Families are weird. And really, is there any familiar structure stranger than that of the fundamentalist Mormons? Seven wives, forty-seven children? I don’t think so.

Over the course of two years, I visited the adjoined towns of Hildale and Colorado City nine times—at that point it was one of the biggest polygamist compounds in the country. Now, years later, Warren Jeffs’ trial has brought Polygamy into the media spotlight.

At the time of my visits, the area was fairly remote and felt very dangerous for an outsider. I definitely did not fit in. I armed myself with a taser gun and drove the streets, looking at prepubescent brides and gaggles of young children in prairie dresses or church-like slacks and shirts. The schools had been closed by then and the kids had nothing to do. The only form of recreation I saw were trampolines, one in each dirt filled yard—block after block of children bouncing and bouncing, five or six at a time. From those visits I was able to bring Honey Belmont to life.