"Under The Banner of Heaven": A Review

By Delilah Shaw

The book, Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer is very well written and encourages one’s mind to be fully engulfed in the content presented. It follows Ron and Dan Lafferty, who were accused and imprisoned for killing Brenda Lafferty, the wife of their brother, and Erica Lafferty, Brenda’s one year old daughter. Years prior to this, Dan Lafferty started to read about Mormon Fundamentalism. Mormon Fundamentalism is a very strict form of Mormonism that only gives power to white males and also supports polygamy that only males can partake in. Dan Lafferty introduced it to his brother, Ron Lafferty, and he was easily convinced of its truth. Yet, Ron Lafferty’s wife and kids left him because of his strict new rules, and this caused him to become very depressed. Still, Ron and Dan continued to pursue fundamentalism and Ron started to receive revelations from God. One of these stated that Dan was to kill Brenda and Erica Lafferty. They were both so convinced that God told them this message, and that they could not go against his wishes. Dan Lafferty murdered both Brenda and Erica on July 24th, 1984. This book was published in 2003 because Jon Krakauer stumbled upon this case and was interested to learn about Mormonism.

In my opinion, parts of it seem to drag-along, but its overall goal of explaining a crime case through history is well constructed. The flip back and forth between different years of history and the present is very impressive, as it is not confusing. In addition to this, the quotes used between each passage are a very interesting choice made by Krakauer. They allow the reader to transition between time periods, as they act as worthy obstacles that the reader must get through in order to be exposed to a new story. While I appreciate the multitude of stories and I think they are necessary to explain the Lafferty crime case, I think that the historical accounts could have been shorter. Unnecessary information was put in many of the chapters, which made them wordy and hard to get through. Instead of the reader acknowledging the parallels between Mormonism throughout different years, sometimes the reader was left wondering the relevance of a great majority of a chapter. Overall, Under the Banner of Heaven, is a captivating book that gives readers a well-rounded explanation of Mormonism.