Meet Jerry

Childhood and Upbringing

Before I reached adolescence, my mostly-idyllic childhood on a farm with my mothers and many siblings in the south Salt Lake Valley was disrupted by raids by law enforcement, and agents of the Mormon (Latter-Day Saints) Church.

My polygamous parents served jail time for their illegal union, and we children faced the threat of foster care. Our family was forced into hiding, with some mothers and their children fleeing to Mexico, and others scattered across several rural western states. Mama and her twin sister-wife found refuge in Elko, Nevada. We lived there under false narratives to keep us safe and together, behind masks in our social, school, and church lives.

Education & Professional Life

I graduated from Elko High in 1963, after several of my brothers. My father prized education, like many Mormons. But like many fundamentalists, he resisted its discoveries and difficult truths. I did not. I was eager for learning beyond my tight religious world, and went on to earn higher degrees in History and English at the University of Utah.

While completing my doctoral dissertation, I taught English at the University, and later taught at Granite High School in Salt Lake. In May 1977, we suffered the violent loss of my father at the hands of a rival polygamous faction, who threatened harm to my greater family. That summer I moved with my wife and child to Chico, California, where we began a new life away from Salt Lake City.

I taught secondary and university in Northern California until 1983, when I joined the Butte County Office of Education as Director of Program and Resource Development. I worked with partners in K-12 education, health and human services, and government offices, facilitating student, teacher and community relationships and services at local, regional, and state levels.

Writing:

Throughout my intense teaching and administrative career, and raising three kids, I ran low on sleep. In the wee hours of the morning I was called to write of my coming of age inside polygamy's parallel reality. Now, while I live more gently with my wife Joanne in Butte Creek Canyon, enjoying family, friends, gardening, and fly fishing, the stories continue to come. After the publication of Hideaways, the stories are taking me further back, beyond my own childhood into the early Mormon world of my father, and of his fathers. Stay tuned.