Under the Banner of Heaven

In his author’s note at the end of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” Jon Krakauer confesses that the book he wrote was not the book he intended to write; that latter book was about the questions of integrating faith and reason, and truth and the history of the Mormon religion. As it is, the book reads like an extended magazine article about the Lafferty murders and their relationship with other Mormon Fundamentalists doled out in tasty chunks between unexciting slabs of warmed-over history, for which Krakauer relies heavily on several other books. Despite blood feuds, divinely-ordained murders, and polygamy, the pieces of this puzzle are neither integrated nor satisfying.