{"id":5474,"date":"2011-09-20T12:40:51","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T19:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=5474"},"modified":"2011-09-20T12:40:51","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T19:40:51","slug":"godsbigblog-true-story-of-big-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/godsbigblog-true-story-of-big-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Openers: Meet the Polygamist Family That Inspired TV’s “Big Love”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a>
“Big Love” inspiration: Alina, Vicki and Valerie with their husband Joe Darger at the RNA conference. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I’m\u00a0just back from the annual Religion Newswriters Association conference<\/a>, where I got a close-up look at the polygamous\u00a0Darger family —\u00a0three wives, one husband —\u00a0who inspired the TV series “Big Love.”<\/p>\n

It was a great TV show, and I’m expecting the book, Love Times Three<\/em> to be pretty interesting as well.<\/p>\n

The “Big Love”\u00a0TV wives were all very different. There’s Barb, the sensible one;\u00a0Nicki the uptight product of an abusive polygamous family, and Margene, wilful and sexy.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0 the three Darger women were asked which one was the Margene in the family, they\u00a0laughed and\u00a0replied none. Indeed, the\u00a0 women\u00a0spoke of taking a little quiz, which revealed that all three of them were Barbs to the core.<\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a>Based on my quick glimpse of this family, I believe it. The three\u00a0sister wives\u00a0even look alike (two are twin sisters), with shoulder-length dark hair, handsome faces, and — despite producing and\u00a0caring for\u00a0 24 children between them —\u00a0trim\u00a0figures.<\/p>\n

The Darger family\u00a0uses the term polygamy, but technically, since it\u00a0involves three wives, it is polygynous.<\/p>\n

Personally, I just don’t see how the math works out here. All four Darger adults grew up in polygynous families. All told, they have produced 11 boys and 13 girls. What’s to become of their 11 sons when they grow up and want to follow in their father’s, mothers’\u00a0and ancestors’\u00a0footsteps and marry\u00a0two,\u00a0three or more\u00a0women? Will there be enough women in their community to go around?<\/p>\n

I asked Alina about this, but her answer doesn’t add up.\u00a0A man\u00a0has to be affluent enough\u00a0to\u00a0support a family of three wives and\u00a0a couple dozen\u00a0children, she said, and it isn’t often\u00a0that three women and a man will fall in love — so\u00a0 it just doesn’t happen very often.<\/p>\n

But that belies the family’s statement in their book that their primary charge, along with abiding by the gospel, is to perpetuate plural — that is, \u00a0polygynous — marriage.<\/p>\n

More details to come when I’ve had a chance to\u00a0look more closely at\u00a0the book. The post is entitled Is Polygamy Norma<\/a>l?<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert. Do not read on if you are watching the “Big Love” \u00a0TV series.<\/h5>\n

The TV show’s\u00a0final season ended with a bang last spring — though one of the Darger wives told me that she hadn’t seen the finale\u00a0and didn’t know how it ended (she was too busy caring for the family’s 24 children, maybe.)<\/p>\n

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the show ends — with the husband getting shot to death.<\/p>\n

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage<\/em>. By Joe, Alina, Vicki, and Valerie Darger, with Brooke Adams. HarperOne, 2011.<\/p>\n

Thoughts on marriage of the conventional type at “Widowed:\u00a0 The We-Ness of Marriage.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “Lucky Me. I Told Jon Newhall I Loved Him.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

More thoughts on the nature of the Universe at “What Is Beauty? It’s Seeing the World for the First Time — At Abbott’s Lagoon.”<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And — \u00a0“A Meditation on Holy Week: An Afterlife Where Time Does Not Exist.”<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 Also —\u00a0 \u00a0 “Widowed: John Donne, Meet Leonard Cohen — And Send Us a Song, Please, From the Mystery Beyond.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Inspired<\/a><\/p>\n

I got a close-up look at the polygamous Darger family, three wives, one husband, who inspired the TV series “Big Love.” Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,50],"tags":[585,586,34,359,587,433],"class_list":["post-5474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-openers","category-on-writing-reading","tag-big-love","tag-darger","tag-dont-miss","tag-fundamentalist-mormons","tag-polygamy","tag-religion-newswriters-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}