Customer Reviews

Children of God

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I think this is a must for all Utahns, Mormon and "gentile". It is a very readable history helping one to understand the Mormon people as pioneers and as a religious group.

As a person who was raised in the Mormon faith and who still maintains close ties to my cultural heritage, I found this book to be a vivid and gripping retelling of what I see as the quintessential American epic. Fisher draws on his own experience growing up among the Mormons of Eastern Idaho as well as extensive research to paint portraits of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in the early days of Mormonism. Fisher's gift for description never fails him, and his dialogue rings true (I love the phrase "Hit the grit!" that recurs throughout the novel).

Fisher comes to the same conclusion that I have reached regarding the early church: that Joseph and Brigham and the others truly believed their own story. He balances sympathy with skepticism in his fictionalized narrative of some of the most remarkable events of the 19th century. How an obscure sect came to become a major religion is truly an epic-worthy tale, and Fisher tells it with skill and the commitment to craft that characterizes all of his writing. He is oddly prescient in his predictions about the transformation that the church will undergo as it strives to become increasingly mainstream and to distance itself from its controversial, polygamous, henotheistic roots.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Mormons or the West, or in the nature of religious faith and the actions it can inspire. The story of a people persecuted for their beliefs who turn tragedy into triumph and make a desert blossom like the rose is truly an American epic.