19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction that Makes Improbable History Seem "Real", April 1, 2006
"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card is one of my all-time favorites. And I thoroughly enjoyed all the sequels. I consider him one of the finest science fiction writers of all time. Little did I suspect that he has also written excellent historical fiction.
"Saints" (first published way back in 1984) begins in Manchester, England, in 1829, in the midst of the horrors of the industrial revolution. A family falls on hard times and you quickly get caught up in their day-to-day struggles for survival. But no sooner do you think you are reading a latter-day version of Dickens, then the Latter Day Saints appear. Young Dinah Kirkham and her mother and brother convert
to Mormonism and emigrate to America -- extraordinary events that the author makes seem inevitable, from his thorough build-up of the characters and their circumstances. Dinah becomes the focus of the book, which follows her from age 10 to age 100, marrying Joseph Smith, and later Brigham Young. She becomes so real, so believable, so necessary to the history of the Mormon Church, that when you are done reading the novel, you'll be impelled to do one Google search after another, looking for evidence that such a woman really lived. The author also succeeds remarkably in making the strangest beliefs and practices of the Mormon Church -- including polygamy -- seem natural and inevitable: psychologically "true".
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I absolutely loved this book, October 3, 1998
By A Customer
I normally read Card for his science fiction and fantasy, so I expected to be rather uninterested in Saints. Also, I am not religious at all, and books which focus on religion tend not to interest me. However, even though it took me a while to get into it, I completely loved this book. I was willing to completely accept and believe in the religious views of all of the characters, and become completely absorbed in the story. Orson Scott Card does in Saints what he does in all of his science fiction and fantasy-- he tells a story you believe, about characters you truly feel for, who become, in some way, a part of your life. If you are a fan of Card, this book is worth reading, even if you normally only read science fiction or fantasy.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
well-written and interesting, September 24, 2000
I was looking for a book by Orson Scott Card (having never read one before) and this was the only one available at the library that day.
I imagine most people looking for this book are either OSC fans or Mormons (or interested in Mormons.) Not only have I never read any other Orson Scott Card, but I also am not a Mormon and know very little aside from the bare basics about the rise of the Mormon religion. However, as one who enjoys historical fiction, in that regard I am qualified to give an opinion.
As a piece of historical fiction, the book is very well-written, with attention to details and his characters are complicated and true to themselves, seeming not to be re-hashings of characters created centuries ago, and not simply having the motivation of propelling the story. The book seems written to deceive - or at least blur the lines between fiction and reality, making you wonder how much if the story is indeed true, how many of these people did in fact exist.
The book is essentially in two parts. The first half tells the story of the Kirkham family and the odds they face - the father deserting them to fend for themselves in lives of poverty in 1820's Manchester, the three children each finding their own destiny, the eldest son rising to prominent engineer through his own sweat and determination, the youngest son having successes handed to him thanks to his family's endurances, and daughter Dinah struggling to be an independent woman in a society ruled by men.
At the midpoint of the book, the family is split over the arrival of Mormons, one of whom converts half the family in one night. Any true believer has to go to America to build the new city, so half the family wrenches itself from the other half, tearing mothers from children and brothers from sisters and husband from wife in a heartbreaking time all due to conversion.
In the second half of the book, the author examines the struggle of accepting and living with the Mormon principle of polygamy, called plural wives or celestial marriage. At no time did I truly understand the concept as they did, but it was engaging to me to try to understand how this crept up and sustained itself (and against what threats, inside and outside the Mormon city.) Dinah, the heroine of the story, falls in love with Joseph Smith, founder and leader of the Mormon faith, and he has already secretly taken a few other wives. Dinah is friends with Joseph's first wife, Emma, who does not approve of "celestial marriage" and so is in the dark about Joseph's other marriages. Once the cat starts to come out of the bag, Dinah becomes a vocal advocate of "celestial marriage", even convincing her brother Charlie's wife to give Charlie her own sister to marry as a second wife.
I did not feel that the author was trying to convert the reader or defend a principle, only to investigate how it is possible that a strong and independent woman could advocate polygamy, and how the advent of the new idea might have arisen and been accepted into a society of people we might recognize if we had been there to see them.
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