Catching Up on Some Reading (and Writing and Other Stuff)

 

A couple of months ago, I was having lunch with my old colleagues at BYU Studies, and one of them asked me what I was reading. When I told them, they suggested I might find something a little more uplifting. I generally read at least three books at a time (sometimes as many as eight), and one of them I often read only while shaving in the morning, so it takes me some time to get through that book. For the past many months, my shaving book has been Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. The two other main books I was reading at the time were Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown’s Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

For some reason, in all the years I’d spent in Mormon studies, I had never read Compton’s masterful account of the lives of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, so I decided it was about time. I have a complicated personal relationship with polygamy. I am not a fan of it and have a hard time believing it was inspired, but I am also descended from two second wives, one on either side of my ancestry. So, I suppose, without polygamy, I wouldn’t even be here to write about it. I have read other books on plural marriage and have edited articles about it, so I know a fair bit about the Principle, but Compton’s book was eye-opening in some regards, mostly about how difficult polygamy was for many of those who lived it. Compton’s title is perfect. Most of Joseph’s wives, who ended up married for time to Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, or some other prominent Church leader, were often very lonely and lived difficult lives, often in poverty.

If you haven’t read In Sacred Loneliness, I highly recommend it. There is a good deal of tangential history in these accounts too, especially about the trek west to Utah and the early years of struggle in the Great Basin. It made me think often about my own pioneer ancestors and what they endured for their faith.

I am still in the middle of Vengeance Is Mine, and it is as depressing and disheartening as I expected. When Rick Turley and his two coauthors (Glen Leonard and Ron Walker) of the predecessor to this book approached BYU Studies with the request that we publish two sets of documents about the massacre that they had discovered in the Church’s archives, it was my lot to participate in the editing and publishing of those documents in a book titled Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris Collections. It was a sobering and depressing experience.

One set of documents came from interviews conducted by Church historian Andrew Jenson in the 1890s. In 1892, Jenson was invited by the Church president to travel to southern Utah and gather historical information about the Mountain Meadows Massacre before all the participants and witnesses had died. Jenson gathered an impressive amount of information, but it took a toll on him. He wrote upon returning to Salt Lake City, “It has been an unpleasant business. The information that I received made me suffer mentally and deprived me of my sleep at nights; and I felt tired and fatigued, both mentally and physically when I returned home.” I understand. Editing his accounts had a somewhat similar effect on me.

The other collection of documents came from David H. Morris, a St. George attorney and judge who had family ties to the massacre and who knew some who had a role in the killing. Some of these people swore affidavits before him when he was a notary public. He also asked “old-timers” privately about the massacre and took notes. When he died, his foster daughter, Helen, along with his other children, went through his papers, which, I should add, Juanita Brooks tried for years in vain to gain access to. After finding the massacre-related documents and seeking legal advice from Helen’s husband’s cousin, who was an attorney, the family decided to personally deliver them to the First Presidency, and so Helen dropped them off at Church headquarters. And there, like Andrew Jenson’s interview notes, the Morris collection vanished into the archives, until they were unearthed decades later by Turley and company.

The massacre was, of course, one of the ugliest episodes in Church history and is fully recounted in the first of Turley’s books. Vengeance Is Mine, on the other hand, is mostly about the aftermath, which I’m just getting to. All very uplifting material, but the Church is determined to air out this dirty laundry, and it is an important piece of history. I know Rick Turley and had some interaction with him regarding the documents book. I also used to work with his coauthor, Barbara, when we were editors at Church magazines. So, I have a personal interest in this volume.

The third book on my recent reading list is Flowers for Algernon, which I read when I was young and wanted to read again because I remembered how well written it was. It’s the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally handicapped man (in the 1966 book, he is referred to as a “moron”) who undergoes experimental brain surgery to increases his intelligence. The surgery, which had been tested on mice—in particular, one named Algernon—is wildly successful, turning Charlie into a genius. But things start to go haywire when Algernon regresses and then dies. Charlie does some frantic research and figures out that a flaw in the process will have a similar effect on him. The story ends with him gradually returning to his original level of intelligence. It’s a tragic tale and was the inspiration for the 1968 movie Charly, for which Cliff Robertson won a Best Actor Oscar.

After I finished Flowers for Algernon, I needed something a little more upbeat, so I downloaded the ebook version of another book I had read as a youth but couldn’t remember much about except that I really liked it. This is Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a fascinating look at a possible future (and tragic? destiny) of humanity. I had read a lot of Clarke’s work earlier in life when I was more a science fiction fan than I am now, and I had forgotten just how good a writer he was.

Now, however, I’m on to other books, including Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy and John Grisham’s latest, The Widow, which is apparently his first who-dunnit. I’m also intermittently wading my way through DK’s The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, a summary of the ideas of more than 100 of the greatest thinkers in philosophy. It’s surprisingly well written and is the most pain-free way I can think of to augment my very meager understanding of the field of philosophy.

My wife and I also recently attended the 2026 Mormon History Association conference in Las Vegas, and I came away from the sessions with at least two books I need to read. Then, last evening, as we were picking peas in the garden, we were listening to a Salt Lake Tribune “Mormonland” podcast in which they were interviewing Richard Hanks, son of Marion D. Hanks. Richard has written a biography of his father, who was several decades ahead of his time in many ways. So, another book to add to my growing list. I wish I were a faster reader, but I’m not. I’m actually a very fast editor, but I read very slowly. I don’t quite understand how that works. Maybe I just edit as I read. I’m also a very fast writer. Whatever.

My book reading often gets pushed aside by my attempts to keep up to date on what’s happening in the world. I’m a news junky, and I’ve often said (truthfully) that I will have a lot more free time once Trump exits the political scene. He is a major and dangerous distraction in our world. And he’s getting worse as his mental capacity noticeably declines and as his craving for power, wealth, and attention spins out of control.

My reading also gets backseated quite often by my writing habit, but that has actually been paying off. In addition to the ebook I just released titled Saving America from the Wealthy: Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone (see my last post) and the occasional op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, I have also had five varied pieces accepted this year for publication. BYU Studies printed in its latest issue a poem I concocted (I’m not really a poet), and they are supposedly publishing an article early next year in which I tackle some problems with the accounts of a vision purportedly experienced in 1913 by a young BYU grad named Alfred Kelly. The vision was popularized in a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland when he was BYU president. Dialogue has also agreed to publish in its next few issues a piece of short fiction, a book review, and a personal essay. So, five different genres . . . or seven if you count the ebook and the op-eds. Variety is the spice of life, they say.

Well, that’s it. Retirement is turning out to be a lot busier than I had imagined. And I haven’t even mentioned morning basketball, yard work, grandkids’ sporting events, and cooking dinner (I promised my wife that after I retired I’d take over dinner prep). I sometimes wonder how I ever found time to work.