Law Commons^™

Gloria’S Story And Guatemala’S Faith: Adulterous Concubinage, Law, And Religion, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

John Wertheimer, the author of “Gloria’s Story,” has produced a complex and absorbing text that skillfully guides the reader through the microhistory of Gloria’s concubinage to an enhanced appreciation of the greater legal, social, and institutional forces at play in mid-twentieth century Guatemala. Using Gloria’s story to shift into more general observations about law and society in Guatemala, Wertheimer states that laws can “affect behavior by establishing incentives and disincentives for different types of action and by reinforcing or undermining different values.”1 Wertheimer reads the legal records involving Gloria and her family to write her story from the dominant critical …