After its publication in 2002, Betty Webb’s mystery Desert Wives rallied the anti-polygamy forces in Arizona to such an extent that by May, 2004 a state law outlawing the forced "marriage" of minor children to polygamists was passed, making this practice a felony.
Soon afterwards, Warren Jeffs, one of the chief "prophets" of a polygamy compound in Colorado City, Arizona, decamped with his followers to southern Texas, near the Mexican border. He is rumored to have more than 75 "wives," many of them mere children.
In May 2006, he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution of state charges. Jeffs was apprehended in August just north of Las Vegas.
Desert Wives is the fourth title in the Lena Jones series. At four, Lena was found abandoned, lying on the side of a desert highway with a bullet in her head. Her obsession with solving the mystery of her own life led her to become a private eye.
