Novels about Mormons

I’m just reading Orson Scott Card’s Saints. I’ve gotten a bit fascinated with Mormons, and would like to read more good novels about Mormons of any period, whether pro or con. Not looking for histories or biographies. Any recommendations?

The first Sherlock Holmes book has a lot of Mormon stuff in it. Not particularly accurate though.

I don’t believe A Study in Scarlet is the first Holmes book. I also thought a lot of the Mormon parts were set decades in the past, like 1840s or so and that Doyle’s characterization was fairly accurate in that context.

What were those YA books about the (post)frontier family in Utah? They weren’t explicitly Mormon, but the author was, and there were some subtle Mormon stuff in there.

The Great Brain.

Frankly, most fictional novels about Mormons are crap, both pro and anti - and it is very difficult to find a novel with Mormonism as its primary theme that isn’t a polemc on one side or the other. There are (a few) good books with Mormon characters, and many good Mormon authors who don’t write “Mormon Books”. There are whole chains of stores that cater just to Mormon readers, but very few of those books are worth your time - they just aren’t that good. A few possibles:

Riders of the Purple Sage and Study in Scarlet - both true classics with Mormons playing the villians.
Robert Kirby, a humorist writing for the Salt Lake Tribune, has written a couple of fun novels - humorous police stories - as well as his weekly column - both worth reading.
The Giant Joshua by Maureen Whipple and The Backslider by Levi Peterson, both obscure but excellent.
Card also wrote a series of Mormon post-apocalyptic short stories in Folk Of The Fringe.
Joni Hilton’s novels can be fun.
Brady Udall’s Lonely Polygamist
Avoid Gerald Lund. {shudder}
Special note should be made of Richard Dutcher’s movies - excellent pieces of artistry, but not novels.

Card’s Homecoming series of books is also heavily influenced by the Book of Mormon.

What he said.

I can’t remember title or author, maybe someone can, but I read an interesting novel awhile back. Set in the 19th century it brought an improbable collection of historical figures together. Sir Richard Burton comes to Deseret on some kind of diplomatic mission involving supporting the Confederacy, Mark Twain makes an appearance, stricktly fiction, but plenty of historical Mormon stuff, can’t vouche for the accuracy. An indian is the narrator IIRC.

Thanks! Maybe the author was only half-Mormon, and not really practicing, but close enough. They were semi-autobiographical.

Ha! No, John Fitzgerald was a Catholic living in southern Utah. His MOTHER was a Mormon, though, and his brother Thomas (the eponymous “Great Brain” of the novels) was the only member of the family who in real life became a Mormon and went on a mission. (Quite a bit different from the Catholic character Tom Fitzgerald in the books, who went to a Catholic boarding academy in the fourth book.)

If you liked the Great Brain stories, you’ll probably enjoy his much-more-autobiographical stories collected for adults in Papa Married a Mormon and Mama’s Boarding House, which he actually published before the Great Brain stories; when the market was no longer there for the adult stories, his agent and publisher convinced him to take some stuff out, add some stuff that would interest children, and turn his next story into what became The Great Brain.

Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series is essentially based on the life of Joseph Smith (from the point of view of Card, a devout Mormon, of course). His Homecoming series is taken right from the plot of the Book of Mormon, so much so that he had a form letter he sent out to the many of his fellow Mormons who wrote in accusing him of plagiarism, explaining why it was NOT plagiarism, by golly!

One of the protagonists of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Seldom Seen Smith, is a polygamist “Jack Mormon.” Two of the others, Doc Sarvis and Bella, as part of a scheme to blow up a dam, join the Mormon church and marry at the end of the novel, but aren’t presented as at all typifying the religion. Most of the novel is set in 1970s Utah.

The Twilight series, I hear.

Udall’s Lonely Polygamist, which Reloy3 mentions in passing, is a wonderful novel, and, AFAICT, respectful of Mormonism.

I haven’t read it in a while, so I could be wrong, but I believe it was fairly inaccurate regardless of the time period. For example, I believe the female heroine fears for her life because she refuses to marry the son of a Mormon higher-up. While there may have been some unsavory aspects to polygamy, I believe that threats were more likely to be spiritual than physical. Many Mormon women did not marry their intended husbands, or married them and subsequently divorced them (Utah had some of the most liberal divorce laws in the country at the time, and many wives of prominent leaders, including Brigham Young, dovorced them). I am not aware of any who were threatened or harmed, and many remained in Utah.

It is, in fact, the very first Holmes novel, appearing in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887.

Doyle got his information about the Mormons and Utah from the written material of the time, when Mormon missionaries were trying to make converts in Britain. People distrusted their motives and their secrecy, and the allegations of polygamy made them seem scandalous.
Doyle got the geography wrong – he has the Salt Desert on the East of Salt Lake City, so that they had to cross the “Great Alkali Plain” to get there. It’s on the west.* His characterization of the LDS Elders and their motives would be seen as prejudiced today. Doyle seemed to see the US as a barely-civilized country filled with evil secret societies, starting with this first book.

If you’re looking for Salt Lake City mysteries that get their facts about the Mormons straight and get the geography right, check out Robert Irvinbe’s “Moroni Traveler” mysteries. Irvine is, I think, LDS:

1 Baptism for the Dead
2 The Angels’ Share
3 Gone to Glory
4 Called Home
5 The Spoken Word
6 The Great Reminder
7 The Hosanna Shout
8 Pillar of Fire

*This kicked off a great tradition of mysteries set in Utah getting the geography wrong. I’ve got lots of other examples.

Ah yes, my literary hero;). Minor nitpick, the eventual Ms. Sarvis was Bonnie Abzug, not Bella (the fictional Bonnie was much better looking than the real-life Bella). And when Doc & Bonnie joined the Mormon church it wasn’t part of the scheme to blow up the dam, but part of their plea-bargain to get them off with a figurative slap on the wrist.

Another Mormon character that figured prominently in both The Monkey Wrench Gang and the sequel Hayduke Lives is J. Dudley Love* the Bishop of Blanding. Love is the gang’s chief nemesis, sort of a Mormonized Boss Hogg, who rules San Jaun County with an iron fist and eventually decides to indulge in a bit of polygamy (he has fallen in lust with a young female park ranger).

Edward Abbey’s Mormon characters in these two books were actually caricatures…he didn’t intend for them to reflect real Mormons, whom he actually seemed to like (rather uncharacteristically, as Abbey was contemptuous of most religion). In some of his non-fiction books, he wrote respectfully of the Mormon pioneers and inhabitants of his beloved canyon country.

*Quoth Edward Abbey; “You can always tell a shithead by that initial initial”.

This linkought to answer the OP.

When I was a Mormon, I absolutely loved a few series of books:

The Storm Testament, by Lee Nelson - As I recall, it had fictional characters responding to real historical events. The same author wrote a book called Rockwell about Joseph Smith’s bodyguard. In the book, Rockwell is hired by Smith to shoot the ex-governor. So while the books were intended for a young LDS audience, they weren’t completely whitewashed.

The Work and the Glory, by Gerald Lund- A fictional family interacting with actual historical events. This one really is whitewashed. You may see Joseph Smith doing foolish things, but he is portrayed as a humble prophet. In all conflicts, the Mormons are innocent victims and the Missourians are brainless zombies who torment Mormons for sport.

Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, by Chris Heimerdinger - A couple of Mormon teenagers stumble into a time portal that puts them in the middle of the wars described in the Book of Mormon.

I spent some time looking it up - The Rock Child, by Win Blevins. Sounds very interesting!

masonite: Since you’re reading Card, I recommend his* Folk of the Fringe*. It’s a good collection of stories.