Utah Books

"Every day people are straying from the church and going back to God." (Lenny Bruce, 1972)

Jon Krakauer began this book with the murder of Brenda Lafferty, a Mormon wife and her 15 month old daughter, Erica, in American Fork, Utah in 1984. It was quickly established that Brenda and her daughter were killed by her brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty. Ron was a mainstream Mormon but was converted to Fundamentalist Mormonism by Dan shortly before the murder. From this story, Krakauer traces the origin and development of the Mormon Church and the splinter fundamentalist wing. This is a book with two stories connected to each other by religion. It is an informative book about one of America's home spun religions, Mormonism; the others include the Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostalism (Sarah Palin's Christianity), and various others (see: Harold Bloom, The American Religion, 2006 Chu Harley Publishers), many of them including the Mormons arose in the mid 19th century. They seem to have a fascinating history. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church sprang from the early movement started by William Miller, who might have had a greater reputation had his prediction that Christ's second coming was due on 22 October 1844 come to pass. Joseph Smith, a charismatic young man who started his career as a crystal gazer, using "peep stones" to tell fortunes.

In 1823, when he was 17 years old, an angel called Moroni visited him and told him that a sacred text written on gold plates and in an ancient Egyptian language would be revealed to him. The plates had been buried for more than a hundred years. After several failed attempts with the help of his wife Emma, whom he persuaded to elope with (because her father didn't trust him), Smith was finally given the plates which he translated with "divinely endowed spectacles" called "interpreters", given to him by Moroni. Smith lent the transcribed text to his neighbour Martin Harris (to show his family). Harris, who worked on this project as Smith's scribe lost the entire transcript so Smith had to re-transcribe the plates which Moroni handed him again after much praying and pleading by Smith. The plates were returned to Moroni after the second transcription was completed. The local press approached by Smith to print the completed book demanded $3,000. It was too large a sum for Smith to raise. He prayed and received a direction from God that Harris had to sell his farm and use the money to print the book. Harris found himself unable to reject this direction from God did as directed and the book was published. Soon after that, on 6 April 1830, Smith incorporated the Church of the Latter Day Saints - and Mormonism was created. Harris, meanwhile, was divorced by his wife.

This book contains the major practices and beliefs peculiar to Mormonism. Polygamy is one of the. The Mormons, however, refer to it as "plural marriages". This practice among the early Mormons and still practiced surreptitiously by present day fundamentalists created a great deal of bizarre relationships. One of these was exemplified by the case of Debbie Palmer who, by her being married to a Blackmore as his sixth wife, established her as a stepmother to her stepmother. The entanglements proved too much even for Krakauer who admitted that many of the relationships can't be explained without a flow-chart. Mormons also believed that there should be no sex with the wives if unless they were ovulating; and there must be no sexual intercourse with a pregnant woman. The head of the Mormon Church is called "Prophet", and God revealed many of his intentions and directions through them. Joseph Smith the original prophet had no less than 133 revelations which were canonized as "doctrines and covenants" ("D & C"). D & C #132 was the covenant revealed by God concerning plural marriages - it has not been abrogated, and has become the springboard for fundamentalist Mormons. Another interesting belief was that an ancient Hebrew tribe emigrated to America and subsequently gave rise to two branches - the dark skinned Nephi (who descended into native American Indians) and the light skinned Laban. Eventually, the Nephites slaughtered the Labanites and that explained why Columbus met no Caucasians when he landed in America. It was also believed that prior to the extermination of the Labanites, Jesus visited America and tried to get the two warring tribes to cease hostility.

Plural marriage was one of the practices that gave rise to much hatred by "gentiles" against the Mormons. Krakauer described vividly the persecution the Mormons faced at the hands of the "gentiles". It was a horrifying account of the way the Mormons were driven out, first, from Missouri, than Illinois. The eventual arrest and assassination of Joseph Smith during his incarceration pending trial (notwithstanding an undertaking from harm) had an air of excitement more commonly found in works of fiction. The murder of Brenda Lafferty was linked to the practice of plural marriage. Brenda was a bright and stubborn woman who prevented her husband, Allen Lafferty from following his brothers' fundamentalist inclination to plural marriage. One day, Dan and Ron Lafferty received the word from God that Brenda had to be killed. Her baby daughter had to go too because, as Ron declared, she might otherwise grow up to be "a bitch like her mother." Her throat was slashed so deeply she was virtually decapitated.

One interesting facet which would not have escaped the reader is just how many such "special ones' God had anointed in the history of the Judeo-Christian faiths; the prophets that God had chosen to reveal Himself and his intentions. More importantly, how does one reconcile the contradictory revelations? The followers of each group will, no doubt, declare that the others were false prophets. How one tells a true prophet from a false one is not entirely clear. Perhaps God works in mischievous ways.

The Mormon Church, through its senior officer Richard Turley issued a long rebuttal two weeks before Krakauer's book was first published, citing a list of errors. Krakauer reviewed his sources and admitted five of them which he explained in his 2004 edition. Turley's complaints and Krakauer's reply are included in this edition. One of these being the reference to the Laban in the Old Testament as the same Laban referred to in the Book of Mormons when they were not the same person.

A very well intentioned book with one main problem Krakauer can never decide where exactly to place the Lafferty Murders in the narrative therefore whatever issue about the nature of Mormonism is being discussed is always cut short and refocused to some kind of vague tie in that relates to these gruesome murders at least in the mind of the author.

So the narrative will be clipping along and you will be very interested in a particular aspect the Golden Plates, The Sons of Ham, plural marriage or the fact that in spite of the LDS's claim to the contrary there have always been competing factions within Mormonism and all of the sudden you will be back on the murders with no idea of how exactly the author bought you to that point. This is at times tragic because while it is a very well researched book at times its subject matter was so broad it felt like it was two or three books in one. This leads on my part to both feelings of confusion and a desire to hear more.

Asserting that America's "homegrown religion" is one steeped in and ultimately defined by persecution and violence, Krakauer's extensively researched book about Mormon fundamentalism is an informative look at an aspect of life that people are not always willing to see. Centering around a double murder in 1984, Krakauer deftly blends the beginnings of Mormonism, and the eventual splitting of the religion into Mainstream Mormonism and FLDS (the fundamentalist sect) with character portraits of those affected by the faith. The threads all merge into an outstanding picture that is not even close to boring - the entire narrative is endlessly interesting, and no one chapter brings down the whole. Each compliments the other and the flow is brilliant. Some may be bothered by the noticeable slant the author takes, but otherwise the tome that winningly combines the thriller with the non-fiction genres raises essential ethical and moral questions that every person should at least ponder - even if they themselves cannot answer them.

This is a story of extremism. Two Fundamentalist Mormons murder their sister-in-law and her two-year old child for her bad influence on their brother. Extreme, right? Yes. But the importance and genius of this book is how Krakauer connects extremism to its foundation - mainstream Mormonism. His reporting of the Mormon culture was spot on, in fact, so precise and accurate that many mainstream members resented the intrusion. He got it absolutely right and made the connection with extreme behavior undeniable. Well done, Krakauer.

There are far better and longer reviews than mine posted here, so I hesitated to even attempt one. However, I've traveled to many of the places described in Jon's book, including Separation Canyon (within the Grand Canyon) and Colorado City, long before the Fundamentalist LDS Church became one of the latest media targets.

Jon's book is very well researched, with first-person accounts, interviews, old letters and many other sources neatly pulled together. He had no intention of this book "bashing" the Mormon church, but the story he tells reveals much about the church, both good and bad.

Jon has a habit of telling stories that need to be told. Here he does his usual good job of doing just that- giving the 21st-century reader a clearer understanding about why Joseph Smith and his followers were hated, why America went to war against the Mormon church and why that same church today continues to be at odds with the rest of America and the world.

The book provided me with many "aha" moments- from the fate of John Wesley Powell's three men who left the expedition and who were "murdered" by Indians while in Mormon country to the reality of Elizabeth Smart's abduction and restoration.

A non-LDS friend recommended this to me, saying it seemed very authentic and realistic in its portrayal of Mormonism. It was completely ridiculous. She got nearly everything about Mormons, and Utah, completely wrong. It was like she asked a few questions, didn't really understand what she was being told, and made up her own drivel to fill in the holes. It was painfully obvious that no LDS member read that novel at ANY stage until after it was already published, or they would have corrected her on nearly everything related to the Church. She blatantly didn't know what she was talking about. There was nothing even remotely accurate in that book.

If foreshadowing was a snake, you'd be dead by Chapter 2. Really dull. Really disappointing.

I started reading this book because our book club is going to review it. I was disappointed from about page one. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ( pretty liberal member ), and I was very offended by the fact that the author did not have one single fact straight regarding the Mormon religion, which is central to this story. Some of her facts about our church are aggregiously inaccurate and knowing that people all over the country are reading these gross misrepresentations about our culture and religion is most frustrating. As for the story, I have never had to grieve over something so heinous as this murder, but I have a friend who has, and it seemed the dysfunctionality of this family went on and on and on. The characters were not fleshed out very well and nothing held me to this book. Once I got online and read over more of the reviews, I could easily figure out the ending, so spared myself the waste of time of finishing the last 1/3 of the book. On to better literature. Mary Silver, Farmington, Utah

I hated this book. I rarely won't finish a book--even a bad one--but this one was awful. Not the plot--a young girl seeks revenge for the murder of her two little sisters--but the authors lack of knowledge on the family's religion sent me through the roof. If you are going to write about a group of people--DO SOME RESEARCH! She had so many wrong statements about Mormons it was pathetic. There isn't a temple in Cedar City, Mormons would not call the Salt Lake Temple the "big" temple, girls wear their wedding dresses when they are married, fathers don't give a father's blessing ever night and morning--they have family prayer, jell-o is such a cliché, and a return missionary is called an RM not a MSS. The list of her discrepancies goes on and on. I kept reading hoping that she would get past the religion thing and get on with the story but I gave up after 100 or so pages. I am still very annoyed, displeased, irritated, etc... by the author.

If the rating system was based on tears I cried while reading this novel, I would have to give it a thousand stars....

This is the first book I have read by Ms. Mitchard, and I was captivated from the first paragraph; as one reviewer observed, this book practically begs to be read. It is a story of redemption, vengeance, questioning one's belief system, forgiveness, love, hate, life, death and the choices we make. It is told from the perspective of Ronnie, a teenage Mormon girl who happened to witness the brutal murder of her two beloved younger sisters at the age of twelve. Interestingly, this horific act truly takes a back seat to the stories of the family itself - the lives of the people who were taken and those who survived. While we do learn about the killer and his life, the novel focuses more on the lives of those who are affected by his crimes. This is quite the antithesis of the way the media presents a story; if this happened in real life, the public would know every conceivable detail about the life of the killer, and have little or no information about the family who was so deeply and irrevocably affected by the crime.

This story is deeply moving and emotional (I cried a lot, which was quite embarrassing while reading in public); however it is not a "depressing" story; rather, it is touching and uplifiting. It restores one's faith in humanity, so to speak.

I recommend it highly, think it makes a great discussion piece, and am looking forward to reading more of this author's works.

An exhasperatingly detailed book that only chronicles the end of Gary Gilmore's life. Does not delve into his childhood or family history. Goes into great detail on things that are of little interest and importance to the overall story. Reads more like a textbook than a biography.

Norman Mailer's book "The Executioner's Song" made me a fan of journalistic fiction. He was capable of using elements from a journalist's world while incorporating the necessary elements to turn this epic project into a beautiful, insightful novel. This combination he used to perfection as he was able to tell the story of Gary Gilmore, the first man to face the death sentence since its reinstatement.

The book is logically constructed focusing on Gary Gilmore and his life in the beginning while slowly shifting towards others with the ominous day of his execution approaching. It centers on his relationships made before the crime and after while always seemingly keeping an un-biased stance. What Mailer does such a good job of doing while constructing this narrative is incorporating all the other characters involved in Gary Gilmore; it was about his family, media, law enforcement, the Supreme Court, ACLU, and other agencies. The second half of this book is dictated by these people and organizations trying to be apart of Gary's life and the decision that will either keep him alive or kill him.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is that Gary Gilmore wanted to be executed. He continuously tells Utah to carry out what they sentenced and stop putting of his execution date. This is quite a twist that makes Gilmore even more of an interesting character. The events of his life seem to have captured the whole country and he couldn't care less about them getting involved and pleads to be killed

This novel is the true definition of an epic; it has a large scope that encapsulates probably everything that surrounded these events. It is a testament to Mailer's ability to research and construct such a powerful narrative to tell such a harrowing story.

Book arrived in a timely manner in perfect condition. On this transaction, at least, the seller was first rate.

It just starts - no throat-clearing, no overture, no vamping-until-ready. Coming from a writer who had made his reputation slamming doors and banging about the house, leaving the television on in one sentence while simultaneously yelling abuse at the radio and bashing out power chords in another, this was of course a surprise. Also a relief and a delight. The flatness and tight-lipped quiet of The Executioner's Song after several decades of Mailer's attention-grabbing real-life excursions (stabbing a wife, running for New York mayor) and delinquent (now sliding into seniloquent) hellclub ravings is what made it so disarming, then very quickly riveting.

The simple declarative sentence, hosed clean of beardy metaphors, adverbial and adjectival excess, of discursive detail and baroque, often bonkers, "existential" riffing, is something that Mailer had always seemed congenitally incapable of writing.

His friend, the critic Richard Poirier, once hazarded a guess that the purpose behind Mailer's stylistic "self-pleasuring" was to excite the reader to some pitch of consciousness equivalent to Mailer's own. As a young man, Mailer had famously said that he would settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of his time. As a result, it had been all but impossible to have a peaceful or casual relationship to his writing. Even after the most obedient attention, the reader was seldom rewarded with any sense of achieved calm. "Mailer is a writer as yet without the ultimate serenity that is probably needed for the great book he wishes to write", Poirier concluded in 1972. "When, oh when, will all the kids grow up, all the wives remarry?" Martin Amis was still wondering a decade later, shaking his head sadly over the latest Mailer-on-Marilyn money-spinner, Of Women and Their Elegance (1981).

In fact, The Executioner's Song had been published in 1979. And it was apparent from the opening paragraph - even of pulse, unblinking, unworried - that here Mailer was trying something new: "Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree. She climbed to the top and the limb with the good apples broke off. Gary caught her as the branch came scraping down. They were scared. The apple trees were their grandmother's best crop and it was forbidden to climb in the orchard. She helped him drag away the tree limb and they hoped no one would notice. That was Brenda's earliest recollection of Gary."

"Gary" is the career criminal and soon-to-be-double-murderer Gary Gilmore - a "bad apple" if ever there was one. "Brenda" is his cousin - his "favourite coz" - who he was there to catch when she fell and is there for him now nearly 30 years later, happy to take Gary in and give him another chance in the security of her God-fearing Mormon family after a lifetime in reform school and jail. And for 1,050 pages, that - the reminder that good apples sometimes turn rotten, the idea that human agency can cushion and sometimes avert catastrophe, Brenda's innocent tumble flagging Gary's grim descent into the gutter - is about as overtly literary, or as metaphorical, as it gets. Nothing writerly happens until a sudden efflorescence on page 14 - a piece of poetic interior monologue, Mailer transposing what he believes is going on inside Brenda's head: "Brenda felt as if she could pick up the quiver in each bright colour that Gary was studying on the jukebox. He looked close to being dazzled by the revolving red, blue and gold light show on the electronic screen of the cigarette console. He was so involved it drew her into his mood."

The ending of The Executioner's Song, of course, is never in doubt: the death sentence passed on Gilmore, and his insistence on facing execution by firing squad, making him the first person to be executed in the United States in a decade, had been headline news around the world (and a punk rock record) only two years before the book came out. On its publication in 1979, conventional narrative tension - what will happen? how will it end? - was necessarily replaced by an altogether different kind of suspense: how would Mailer take this warmed-over material, so recently the subject of television specials and fish-wrap journalism, and make it new again? And more: how long could he go before his old habits of embarrassing grandiloquence and associative rambling, his increasingly unchecked tendency to put "Norman Mailer" at the heart of whatever he was writing, how long before "the slumbering Beast" rose up to reinhabit him and scupper the enterprise?

At the time, the omens didn't look all that promising. A few weeks before The Executioner's Song appeared, Mailer persuaded his publishers to repackage it as a novel, or rather a "true life novel", along the lines of Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. And out of the violent mess of the Gilmore story emerged all-too-familiar Mailer tropes. There was the widely-reported fact that Gilmore had elected to die so he could save his soul, for example, and be reincarnated. And then there was the killer's concurrence with one of Norman Mailer's most frequently recurring ideas: that death is an experience of life, "perhaps the final orgasm into the future". At the time these were real concerns that made turning the pages of The Executioner's Song a white-knuckle experience.
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I remember Mailer once saying that the best way to come across well on television - to remain looking halfway human, that is, in conditions designed to make the scalp boil and the ear-lobes burn and the ego sit up and demand feeding - was to cultivate an air of total, dead-eyed boredom. "Ideally, it was best to feel no more desire than a prostitute toward the 10th client of the night".

In the 25 years since The Executioner's Song was published, Mailer has consistently tried to frame the writing of the book in similar terms, and relegate it to the second division of his work, the first division of course consisting of his volumes of "real" fiction. His sensitivity on this subject is clear in an exchange which took place between Mailer and the high-brahmin American poet Robert Lowell, a fellow-demonstrator on the 1967 anti-Vietnam war march on the Pentagon, which Mailer wrote up in Armies of the Night (1968), his first extended work of non-fiction. Lowell: "I really think you are the best journalist in America." Mailer: "Well ... there are days when I think of myself as being the best writer in America." Journalism for Mailer has always been a kind of literary photography, and unbecoming to the serious writer's artistic dignity. "I think The Executioner's Song, more than any book I've ever done, was an exercise in craft", Mailer has said. "I've never felt close to it".

I don't think I had heard of Raymond Carver 25 years ago when I read The Executioner's Song for the first time. (The Stories of Raymond Carver, his first collection, wasn't published in Britain until 1985). And no writer could be further distanced temperamentally, or in tone and style, from Mailer. "Yes, well, I guess they would like Raymond Carver in England", Mailer commented dismissively when I interviewed him some years ago. Carver's reputation as a minimalist (a term he hated) presented an alternative to the lusty, maximal ambitions which Mailer had always maintained were necessary to tame "The Great Bitch", as he describes the American novel in Cannibals and Christians.

And yet, rereading it now, it's Carver that The Executioner's Song irresistibly suggests, at the sentence level. Carver's ear for ordinary, defeated, working-class speech was unerrring; his immersion in the "applauseless" lives of his factory workers and cosmetics salesladies and motel managers, total. "Nothing vague or blurred, no smoked-glass prose", was Carver's prescription. And in his commitment to common language, the language of normal discourse, he was following an American tradition established by Robert Frost and, before Frost, by William Carlos Williams, the poet of inarticulate America - a poet who distrusted articulacy. "The speech of Polish mothers" was where Williams insisted he got his English from. His famous "flatness" came from the urban "work-yard" of New Jersey. But it was a strain in American writing that had always been antithetical to Mailer.

Language was the chariot Mailer rode in on; it was the weapon with which he was still intent on nailing the Great Bitch and smiting the heathen. He had to suspend work on Ancient Evenings, a big, windy, (over-) ambitious novel about serial reincarnation, set in the Egypt of 1130BC, in order to write The Executioner's Song. And the flat, blank voices of the American Midwest, the voices of the people who were related to Gary Gilmore, or whose lives were otherwise rent by being dragged into Gilmore's orbit, seem to assume an added poignancy or sense of desolation by being transcribed by a writer for whom their very flatness and blankness - positive qualities for Carver and other Dirty Realists - represents a kind of dusty-throated deprivation.

Like Oswald's Tale (1995), Mailer's compelling account of President Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, which was also "produced" by the media hustler and long-time Mailer collaborator, Larry Schiller, The Executioner's Song is divided into two parts of equal length. The first, "Western Voices", is a direct rendering of the murder story from the day in April 1976 when Gary Gilmore was released from the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, until the morning nine months later when he was executed by having four shots fired into his heart at the Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain, Utah. Truman Capote would later claim that Mailer had ripped off the techniques he pioneered in In Cold Blood 15 years earlier - "I do something truly innovative, and who gets the prizes? Norman Mailer!" - and he had a point: Mailer's prose is plainer-dealing, leaner, rougher-edged, but the "saturation reporting" method based on police reports, trial transcripts, tape-recorded interviews with friends and family and so on, is essentially the same.

Mailer's genius in "Eastern Voices", the second part of The Executioner's Song, is to blow apart the mystique Capote cultivated as to how it's all done. In part one Mailer wants the reader to be amazed because the density of detail and the deeply intimate nature of much that is revealed (particularly in the relationship between Gilmore and his teenage girlfriend, Nicole Barrett) seems impossible. In part two he wants the reader to be amazed again because it looks so easy. He wants the reader to be amazed twice.

By 1979, the differences between the conventional practices of straight news reporting and the so-called New Journalism of Capote, Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others were well established. The newspaper reporter wrote to a for mula. He tried to fashion a clear, concise, straight news story, starting with the who, what, when, where and why of an event and proceeding toward the end by placing factual details in descending order of interest and importance - a device that ennabled readers to grasp the essentials immediately and editors to cut stories from the bottom up. His job was to try to hold a mirror up to an event and show its surface. There was zero interpretation. The Capotes and Wolfes, on the other hand, enjoyed the luxury of time: they could hang around until people had forgotten they were there, then creep up on reality with its pants around its ankles. The New Journalist could build up scenes and develop characters; they could even give the sense of being inside a character's consciousness. They could write non-fiction "like a novel".

That much was known, if still contested. What remained unknown and decidedly murky were the often sleazy details of the chequebook journalism and ruthless wheeler-dealing that went into securing exclusives and buying up stories. The naked horse-trading, in other words, that allowed the writers to cosy up to their subjects, drain them dry and then show a clean pair of heels. Enter Larry Schiller.

Part of Truman Capote's beef against Mailer was that, whereas he, Capote, had spent six months interrogating "his" killers, keeping them sweet with comic books and cookies, Mailer hadn't so much as been in the same execution chamber as Gary Gilmore. What Capote failed to take into account was that Mailer had a surrogate - an aide-de-camp and amanuensis - in Larry Schiller. Known as "the journalist who dealt in death" because of the way he had bought his way into stories on people such as Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby, and the Manson family, Schiller is the kind of behemoth character - still fairly freakish then, much less exotic now - who could only exist in the novels of Dickens and the corporate hospitality facilities of late-20th-century America.

The eastern voices in part two of The Executioner's Song are the voices of lawyers, prosecutors, TV anchors, reporters, media monkeys ("There were going to be a lot of monkeys in that zoo"). And the loudest, most colourful and most idiosyncratic of these (as well as, in a strange way, the least deceived) is Mailer's helpmeet Larry Schiller's.

Instead of being repelled by it, as I should have been, I found, instead, that I wanted to draw closer. On January 2 1981 I was on the final pages of The Executioner's Song, which I had read at a gallop. Around tea-time it came on the television that they had arrested a man in Sheffield in connection with the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Forty-eight hours later I was in the bar of the Norfolk Gardens Hotel in Bradford listening to claim and counter-claim about who had "got his chequebook out" for Peter Sutcliffe's father or "locked up" the brother, making notes towards Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son, a book for which Norman Mailer would generously volunteer a quote when it was published in America. In 1995, when I came to write Fullalove, my second novel, "Norman Miller", a tabloid hack specialising in murder, meets his near-namesake, Mailer at the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire.

A telling phrase crops up at key moments in both Oswald's Tale and The Executioner's Song. Having secured worldwide motion picture and publication rights in his true life story, including exclusive syndication on his love letters, suicide notes and family pictures, and having promised to scatter his ashes in the skies over Utah, Larry Schiller approaches Gilmore to say a final farewell before the execution: "He grasped both of Gilmore's hands ... and he said, he heard it come out of him, 'I don't know what I'm here for'"

"Why are you here, they [the KGB officers in Minsk] would ask", Mailer writes in Oswald's Tale. "What do you expect to find?" In both cases the answer is simple: material for two books that are to be counted not only among the very best that one of America's best writers has written, but can also claim a place among the most impressive books published by any American in recent years. The puzzle is why this continues to be a truth that seems self-evident to almost everybody except Norman Mailer.

Except for classical or historical novels, I admit that I am not much of a fiction reader. I picked this book up only because Norman Mailer wrote it and because he is understood to be one of America's foremost writer's of fiction. I had read a book by him about Lee Harvey Oswald and was so unimpressed that I have now forgotten its title. It was supposed to be non-fiction, but appeared to me to be anything but.

Anyway, this book was my attempt to give Mailer another chance. It is of course about the brief period of freedom and then the ignominious death by firing squad of one, Gary Mark Gilmore. Charitably, Gilmore can at best be described as the "scum of the earth," having spent most of his life in, rather than out of prison, from crimes as petty as liquor store heists, up to murder.

Whatever literary value this book is supposed to have had, in my mind at least, was lost and over-shadowed by the wanton, random, and utter senselessness and brutality of the murders he committed before he was finally recaptured and executed.

This, his last chance at freedom, was squandered like the rest of his life. Gilmore proved that he was not able to handle life on the outside because he had no idea how to go about it. Unlike his structured life inside, his life outside of prison had no rhyme or reason. What he knew how to do was to create chaos wherever he went.

During his freedom, he was like the ball in a pinball machine, randomly bouncing along a downward obstacle course of life, where he hoped to be able to ring a few bells, hit a few bright lights and make a few noises before the lights were finally turned out on him for good. It seems that the script for the ending of his life had already been written: by him at birth. His life was an existential black hole, without hope.

Somehow, Mailer tried to turn this foreordained tragedy into a love story between Gilmore and "a trailer park loser" named Nicole, but in my view it all was mostly a literary contrivance. This was not a story of hope: from the beginning, we knew there would be only a fiery ending to this saga. All that was left to do was to tie up the loose ends.

The die sending Gilmore's life on its inexorable downward trajectory had already been cast. Instead of "Mark," "tragedy" should have been Gilmore's middle name. Everything he touched turned to death and then to dust. He was, always the walking dead: A zombie brought back to life by Mailer's literary tricks.

Even when he emerged from prison, all of his lifelines, as well as his nine lives, had been used up. He stood face-to-face with the existential precipice: It was "over-the-cliff" for him, and the sooner the better. Did anyone really think that Gary Mark Gilmore was going to live out the rest of his lost freedom and life as a gas station attendant? Better to go out in a blaze of ignominious glory. Which is what he did. Hell, even I could write that story?

The only tension left for the artist to resolve was how many innocent souls would become the victim of this human wrecking ball. If it takes skill to resolve that dilemma, then leave me out. All I can see is the pain of those who died at his senseless hands. If there is art here I am glad I missed it.

One star

Having read most of the other books dealing with the Mark Hoffman affair, I was interested in this interesting approach. Indeed, there is much to be admired in this account. Although I am a faithful adherent of the LDS faith, I am willing to accept alternate interpretations of LDS church history.

Unfortunately, Worrell make too many statements about the LDS church, LDS history, and LDS temple worship which are demonstrably false, including details of a sensitive nature I'd prefer not to go into, but which careful research would have clarified. It seems he either simply skimmed material or read a schetchy account, and then with a somewhat hazy view in his mind simply made up the details in an attempt to clarify the issue.

Given these lapses, I can't help but question details in his discussion of Dickenson, Sotheby's, the Amherst community, etc.

This is unfortunate, really, as the topic of Hoffman's non-LDS materials needs further discussion; unfortuantely, I doubt the quality of work done in this book as evidenced by the mishandling of the LDS materials. A much better approach for that aspect may be found in Robert Lindsey's "A Gathering of Saints."

I found it be a terrific book, well written, flowing, and plenty of information about forgeries and past histories. If nothing else, I discovered plenty of information on Emily, her family, and the area and climate around her home. There's always been plenty of information about Mormonism, and it's to the individual ot make up his/her mind about the religious aspects. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others.

This book goes beyond the usual anti-Mormon quasi-historical documentary/docudrama. As Mormon history is often documented despite unsure, poorly substantiated, and conflicting facts, this book is convincing based on the writer's sharp research and study of sciences such as forgery, art dealing, and the New England rural lifestyle. I could barely put it down.

This one starts out a bit slow and then speeds up with great exposition about technique, method, motive - leading to grisly murders and a bizarre central character. Dry wit style takes you into the backsludge of a flimsy industry full of fakes. A great read. It is about way more than Mormons or the literal crimes. And I think Aunt Emily is a vastly, grossly overestimated , third rate poet. From Mass, she gets itellectual praise. If she were from Nashville, people would just laugh. But the story is about human nature and greed on the base level, right in polite society. Great writing, page turner, one night read. Would be a great airplane book. Five stars in spite of the slow, polite start and the attempt to make Aunt Emily appear a worthy poet. Got it from library, read it and bought two for gifts from Amazon vendors. Not for the kids.

Simon Worral is clearly an accomplished writer and his book, The Poet and the Murderer, demonstrates that skill. It's a fascinating story about a forger who earns a good living faking historical documents, mainly those that could be important to the Mormon Church. The reader learns a great deal about how document forgery is accomplished, about how little concern the nation's major auction houses demonstrate for the validity of what they put on the block, and about the roots of Mormonism.

The only problem with the book is that the story wanders around in interesting but not necessarily riveting detail --- detail that sometimes loses sight of the story line. What was auctioned off as a poem of Emily Dickinson frames the story in an opening that zeros in on the purchaser, Daniel Lombardo, then the curator of special collections for the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, the center of Dickinson lore.

The character who turns out to be a forger and murderer, Mark Hoffman, fails to come alive in the sense one can identify with him, or pity him or even be truly appalled by him. Raised a Mormon and obsessed by the church, he is portrayed as mechanical man. If his crime had been foreshadowed in greater detail, with a more sympathetic portrayal of the victims, I think the story would have held more of my attention.

But it is wrong to be too critical of Worral's work, which is an easy read. I just wanted more. That is not a bad way to leave a reader, but it does seem that more might have been available to Worral, more of what I wanted to know about Lombardo as well as Hoffman's victims. Finally I'd like to have footnotes on Worral's detailed analysis of the early years of Mormonism, or at least some citations of his secondary sources, so I could easily follow up where my interest was stimulated by this book.

i found a reference to this in re-reading Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Juanita Brooks' Mountain Meadows Massacre had been, for me, the bible about these doings. Bagley has gained access to additional information (eg, letters, meeting notes, etc) and fleshes out the context of the ongoing disputes (from the midwest to the west) in a thorough way, giving me a better understanding of both perspectives. It is a more "academic" book than Brooks'; I wouldn't dispense with either.

Just FYI, my interest in this is based on the decade-plus later murder of the Howland brothers and Bill Dunn* in the "wardhouse" in Toquerville, Utah, on the supposition that they were investigating the MM Massacre. I was disappointed that Bagley didn't get into this.

*the Howlands and Dunn had left the Powell expedition through the Grand Canyon.

Book is in A-1 condition; arrived earlier than expected. Has the perfect information required for a graduate history class I am taking at Western New Mexico University. Truths finally being told by historians is a welcome sight.
mitchell

I read Juanita Brooke's Mountain Meadow Massacre several years ago and decided to follow up with this book to see what if anything was different. This book actually compliments the work of Ms. Brooke's. It includes much more detail and as the author indicated does give many new insights not previously available.

It is certainly a disturbing chapter in Mormon history and certainly made me think. I highly recommend this book to any person looking for honest information regarding this incident.

I was hopeful of getting a straight story of what happened at Mountain Meadows when I read this book. My ancestor is involved. Bagley warned that if the reader came to read about the "Saints" this and the "Saints" that, then the reader would be disappointed. I was excited about reading a balanced and unbiased story. I checked it out of the public library. I did not see the biased word "Saints" but I did read a very biased book.


I am not a big conspiracy person. However, Bagley's conspiracy goes like this:

1. The much beloved Parley P. Pratt is murdered.
2. Two Mormon men see the "Arkansas" party leave.
3. They notify the Utah Mormons that the wagon train is on the way.
4. The Mormons want to take revenge for Parley P. Pratt's murder
5. The apostle Charles C. Rich (my ancestor) kicks them out of Salt Lake. He sets in motion the conspiracy and tells them not to take the route that the Donner Party took but rather to go to Mountain Meadows.
6. There Brigham Young has devised a plan to murder all in the wagon train.
7. (By all accounts) About 50 Mormon men (remember no Indians) are led by Lee, a somewhat less of a leader. These 50 men (remember no Indians) keep tough wagon train men with guns pinned down for several days. (That would be tough. I've been there. There were more trees back then.)
8. No attempt is made to cover up the crime site. (The bodies were just left)
9. A very weak story is contrived to explain how everyone in the wagon train was murdered.
10. It doesn't take long for the real story to come out.
11. Still the crime site is not cleaned up. The US Army does that later.

I am not a conspiracy person. I feel Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy.
I do not think there was a conspiracy to kill everyone in the wagon train. It is silly, nonsensical, and intellectually offensive to say that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. Such people put themselves in the same class as the Kennedy conspiracy theorists.

What made Bagley write this?

1. I think he has issues with his Mormon past. He hints of it in his writing.
2. He "does not like Brigham Young". It is probably not a good idea to write a book if you feel that way. The best Hitler books are balanced. Bagley's book is not balanced. He all but admits it.

Conclusion: Bagley blew it. He wrote an implausible book based on an unlikely conspiracy. He started out with the goal of pinning it on Brigham Young. This reveals a bias..

The conspiracy that is the foundation of his book is not supported by other unbiased historians.
A recent book, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, put to rest the Kennedy conspiracy. The upcoming book by Turley will hopefully put to rest the Bagley conspiracy.

The book, _Blood of the Prophets_ was unfortunately written by a 'for hire' author with an a priori conclusion that, in Will Bagley's words, would "pin it on Brigham Young". When you pour your research into an anti-Mormon polemic, it tends to be wasted taint and that's what we've gotten here.

The dialog in the book is old, so it's distracting, and not a quick read, because of it. I read the entire book (book club selection), but I had to force myself to complete it. I didn't think there was much depth at all to the characters until the latter parts of the story, and Jane Withersteen seems far too whiney for my tastes.

One of the first Westerns, with plenty of action and the romance of the west. It features a rugged individual with a dark past, an independent and hardy woman who is in trouble and a cast of other interesting characters.

I think one of the reasons why we don't hear more about it is that most of the villians in this tale are ... (wait for it) ... Mormons. So there is probably some pressure in various publishing houses, etc not to promote it. Zane Grey paints the LDS group here as patriarchal, polygamous ruffians. You would guess that an early Western would use Native Americans, not Mormons, as the villians.

Anyway, if you are not offended by the choice of bad guys, it's a good story.

I thought the movie was very good, so I bought the book.
The book has the little girl Fay who isn't in the movie.
The details about the Mormons in this era were in the book as well, but not the movie.
I have read books considered classic in English and European literature
that aren't as good as this one!
With this book the American western became literature.

The word Lassiter is a name synonymous with gunslinger, hard-edged men with no fear and little room for mercy and love. But when a particular Lassiter entangles himself in the lives of a small Mormon border village, among the purple sage wilderness of Utah, it is anything but slow or dull.

The plot is very complex, blending romance and love, adventure, religion, mystery, suspense, hero mythology, rough and tumble adventure, introspection of man's frailty, and the blind and honest realizations that life, when the moment is right and with right people, becomes more than it could have been.

What Grey does is incredible, both describing the Utah canyons and sage fields with such vividness and detail; and weaving an intricate tale into an epic odyssey of three people, richly depicted and alive: Jane Withersteen, a devout and wealthy Mormon gradually comes to question the churchmen whom she put so much faith in, who are slowly and sneakily trying to break her by taking away everything she loves. Bern Venters, a young Gentile who is caste out, a hunted and marked man who sheds his youthful fervor when he shoots then saves the life of a young innocent girl, Bess. And then, there is Lassiter, a man haunted and wrath-filled by the disappearance of his sister and the loneliness of his trade, has roamed for over ten years to find out what became of her, arriving just in time to meet Jane and save the life of Venters. But when he meets Jane...everything changes. In fact, all gradually change, become so much more as each meet their opposite and struggle, their stories which are told with such care, it will make you heart pound and react TO THEM. It's wonderful! Have you ever read a book where you're shouting at the characters: 'Don't do that!' or 'Why can't believe him!?!'? Grey evokes imagery and emotion, drawing in the reader, forcing them to interact, react and feel as the characters do.

While there is a strong negative representation on Mormanism, it is not the religion itself that is denounced but the men who abuse that belief in order to control others. It is more about true belief in people and what it means to believe, for oneself, versus domination and subjugation of its followers and the harsh punishment of those who do not belong, i.e., the Gentiles. This is a concept that is universal, so please, please don't be offended or come into the story with bias. Remember: this book was written in 1912, and is both a relfection of the times, some history of the area and also, it is an extremly integral vehicle for the plot and an important impetus of change.

Some one commented that the dialogue wasn't good. Heed his opinion with caution, please. While the venacular and style can be distracting, the words are magnetic and vivd, the character's own voice resonating in your head, and the meaning moving. In a way, the dialogue is Grey's own way of further describing and individualizing each character. It adds texture and layers of meaning to words and discussions that are relevant and modern. Give it a chance--Really! I never marked so many places in a book to write down, and remember.

I can't express how incredible this book was, it was truly an experience and for someone who has never liked westerns, in any shape or form, I couldn't put this down. But it is not a book to read quickly or skim over. If you can't put the time in, wait until you can invest effort to reading it, because if you read it fast, you'll dislike it for sure. Read READ this book!

I'm not much of a "Western" reader. But, this was Zane Grey's first book so I thought I'd give it a try. It turned out to be an interesting story. I "read" it as a book on tape. The reader of the book on tape was able to change his voice for each character so the result was like a "radio play". Very enjoyable!
Email:boland7214@aol.

There are a lot of rides described in this book however, this guy has a chip on his shoulder! He can't say much good about anyone except himself. As others have said - there are other good guide books with good trail information and not all the drivel!

This book has fine details on many of Moab's great rides. Throughout much of this guide, however, I got the feel that this author has a chip on his shoulder. He seems to be getting all his revenge and mean spirits out through this guide book. Some of it is actually comical, but most of it just rude. One example (and I'm paraphrasing): riding the White Rim in 4-5 days is "boring". Note to author: some of us actually use our mtn bikes to take us to beautiful, tranquil areas. It's not always about how much air we get or how many miles logged. Anyone who would call 5 days in Canyonlands with a mtn bike "boring" is lacking some serious taste for life.
Instead, buy the Falcon pocket guide by Crowell. It's got great info, is small enough for your pack, and without the rude gossip.

I read several guides about mountain biking Utah prior to my recent trip. I have to say that of the 3 I read, Lee's book was not only thorough, but very accurate. When you get to Utah, you realize how immense the actual area is. There's alot of opportunity to ride, but also for peril. Lee does a nice job of telling stories that are interesting, give a heads up on local cool things, covers ecological and social issues that are relevant, and is a hip and thoughful author. I give the book 5 chili peppers. I will say, it would be nice to have a smaller format I could take in my hydrapack. Instead, I used a human guide!

Any one going to Moab needs this book. Some of the trails are just variations of the same main trail but it gives some great information.

I've read the book and biked with the authors company based in Moab and don't recommend either.

There are many other guides to Moab which are cheaper and equally informative (try Biker Mel's.). Only when you meet the author, ride the routes he describes, the routes he doesn't describe and hear what the locals have to say about him (all bad) do you realise how unreliable this book is. It is just too biased by the authors own personal opinion.

This guy is decsribed locally as a biker snob who made enemies after slagging off everybody else in Moab in this book and who refers to routes as 'his trails'.

i enjoyed this book but thought elizabeth was being taken advantage of by her parents and uncle.she should of been kept in seclusion and not been subject to the public.i feel that in the future this young lady is going to have some problems.

I read this book and I almost feel like it was a serious waste of my time. Tom Smart (uncle of Elizabeth Smart) seems like he is trying to take the stage in this account. Everything in this book you have probably already heard through the media. The book has a very slow start--almost excruciating to get through the first half. I was bored to tears.

I feel for Elizabeth and her Family and would have liked the focus to be on them, their reactions, their feelings,and on Elizabeth's recovery. The nation cares about Elizabeth and how this has affected her and not about Tom Smart's INSOMNIA.

One day in the far Future, hopefully, Elizabeth will write a book and let us know the story of being a survivor, her feelings, and her journey to overcoming this trauma. After all, no one else knows what she and her poor parents went through.

Bottom Line: I found this account to be One-sided and Exagerrated on the Author's part. Tom Smart wanted the Spotlight and Shame on him.

I would not recommend to a friend for Good Reading.

The first time I Read this, I felt like Tom Smart was talking to me Everyday. I'ts so cool, I think the book should tell about everyone else but pervert and pervet Jr. I understand you have to see why he kidnapped Liz, but his mindset is that of President Bush, Stupid and hateful. Everything you need to know about her abduction is all in here. A great read. Don't read it too many times at once, It might scare you.

I was completly stuck on the Elizabeth Smart case when it was all unfolding. I was graduating high school at the time and couldnt imagine with all the dreams I had having them all stolen in the middle of the night. The book is a good read and really details the case well. The only problem I had is the book seems very very one sided. The brother talks all about how much he did and the others did and I kinda felt like he was acting as if he was the parent. It may just be the way I read it but I did find it interesting to get a good profile of the people that took her. Its worth a read but dont forget to read her parents book too.

IN PLAIN SIGHT is the story of the investigation to locate Elizabeth Smart, the teenage girl who was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City. Journalists, Tom Smart and Lee Benson wrote the book. Tom also happens to be Elizabeth's uncle and served as the spokesman for Elizabeth's family during the horrible kidnapping ordeal of his niece.

The search for Elizabeth went on for nine long months and this book is an account of what took place during that time period. Aside from the shocking fact of a young woman's abduction, is the story of the local police and FBI who searched for her, but often seemed to ignore the information that was brought forward by family members and volunteers. The authors also claim that the investigating agencies didn't seem to share the information that they had obtained with each other. There were several sightings of the girl, and the man who had taken her. At one point, after breaking into a building, he was arrested, but released when he said that he was just trying to make a home for his wife and daughter.

This book presents one side of the story, but the FBI and local police probably had other things to take into consideration with their examinations of the events. Apparently the family was investigated and we've all seen enough news stories to know that everyone is looked at when a crime is committed. Unfortunately, we've also heard a lot of stories about the lack of cooperation between different police agencies.

This was an informative book and hopefully the Smart family can overcome the horror that took over their lives. I'm sure the heart of every parent in the world goes out to Elizabeth.

Debi did what few people are willing to do. She told it like it was. She didn't try to make herself appear any other than real, with all that entails. Of course she made mistakes, darlings, that is how we learn. That was what she went into the desert for, to learn, not to get it perfect. And what did she learn? That she was strong, resilient, that despite her sometimes overwhelming fear, she could face it and overcome it. She learned that it was okay to be Debi whatever that might mean. That she didn't have to be any one of the images she'd been trying to fulfill, she could seek her own truth in the silence of her own being. Wonderful !

I am preparing to spend some time alone in the desert. As I looked through the stacks at my local library Desert Solitaire was checked out - but Desert Sojourn was there on the shelf and I checked it out.

Perhaps it is because I too am yearning for deeper meaning in my life and therefore am listening from the heart - but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

It takes great courage to sit with yourself without the escape routes of books, tv, radio, telephones, and all those other distractions.

I was puzzled by some of the reviews - I think they say more about the reviewers than the author.

This is a woman - who was in psychic pain - and she listened to the summons of her soul - and it led her to the desert and deeper into her life.

Because of my interest in Soulcraft (Bill Plotkin) and the work of the animas valley institute (animas.org) this book was a welcome addition to my preparation... and even more so - because I wasn't looking for it - it found me.

Thank you Debi... The world needs wanderers...

I wouldn't even give this book one star but there is no lower rating. The publisher is at fault for this disaster of a book (they never should have accepted it in the first place) that I hope will someday embarrass the author--the reason I hope that is that eventual embarrassment will show that the author has grown out of whatever strange mental land she was living in when she undertook this sojourn. Others have commented on her lack of proper clothing and equipment so I won't repeat that. What hasn't been mentioned are the food stores she chose to take seemed designed to be not only dreary and monotonous, but extremely constipating. It's as if she deliberately built in self-punishment and failure. I can't remember if she said she did any research before undertaking this fiasco, but it certainly doesn't appear that she did.

Debi, where are you now? In a far better state, I hope. Maybe you had to write this book to get there. Don't be disheartened by all the bad reviews. Sometimes we have to crash through the bottom to come out on the other side. And at the very least, you had the guts to do it, and that counts.

Since it's been covered already, I won't get into the incredible lack of preparation and education of "her" environment Debi showed. I can only think she was being self-destructive. How else to explain such outright disregard for the wilderness and, dare I say, stupidity?
I couldn't put this book down, but only because I kept looking for some redemptive qualities. I have no idea what she learned about herself, she seemed to grow very little from her experience and her writing was less than inspiring. I kept waiting for her "Midnight Stalker" to take her out and deliver us all out of her and our misery.
One thing I appreciated was when she finally acknowledged the help she'd received and realized that "no man is an island." However, she continued to talk about how she had proved she could take care of herself. Ah...really? Without the wood stove and wood, not to mention the correctly-sized staples and staple gun and, oh yeah, the warm jacket, Debi would not have made it.
I can't remember being so frustrated by a book I've read. I guess that's something...

I greatly enjoyed this book...as a thirty-something myself who has gone through a divorce, I could relate to a lot of the emotions and the urge to find oneself. Debi's sojourn into the desert, or at least the concept, is one that I often daydream about as a way of searching out my soul and realizing my purpose. I think she has a lot of courage to face herself alone in isolation as I'm not sure I could sleep so many nights in the wilderness alone without dying of fright. The book was well-written, if not a little whiney, at times.

However, at the same time, I found numerous things disturbing. First, the author divorces her husband and leaves her child with him, except for holidays. Then she runs off with some literature guru who lets her live with him jobless and complaining for however long. Second, she goes into the wilderness ill-prepared for 40 days alone - no waterproof hiking boots, no warm jacket, etc. For anyone who has ever camped or skied in extreme conditions, they know that those two items are first and foremost on the survival list. What was she thinking when she brought Reeboks and cowboy boots? Third, she would've surely died had not the ranger and his wife provided her with a parka, wood stove and wood, and staple gun. Fourth, she spent half of her time hiding out in her shelter before realizing that she could occupy her time with creating a camp site area that would make her feel at home. It occurred to me while reading that this is the first thing I would've done - explored my area, created a home, and thus felt safe and comfortable.

Regardless of the frustration, this is a definitely a recommended book.

The book was not my cup of tea. I don't remember the events enough to care about any of the people covered in this book. The part I was most interested in was the scandal with the judging, not with the lovingly written back stories of each of the skaters. By the time the book got to the bit I was interested in I was bored and put the book aside.

Being a fan of a sport such as figure skating, in a country where we don't have winter, is quite hard. I don't get to see as many competitions or information. It is refreshing to have internet, magazines, and a great book such as The Second Mark. It was so good that I couldn't put it down. Goodwin captured the escense of these six extraordinary athletes in a wonderful way. I recommend this book to everyone who loves a great story.

I guess I'm wierd, but what I loved about this book was the backstories on the six skaters, their history, families, coaches, etc. Fascinating stuff. What I got from this was a whole new level of respect and admiration for the pairs skaters coming from Russia and China. I'm also happy to see that the two Chinese skaters featured in this book will be skating in Torino 2006. I'll be watching them with great interest - at least as much as NBC allows me to see of them - and thinking about little six-year old Shen Xue and her bloody socks. There's not much new ground broken on the scandal that rocked the Salt Lake City Olympics, but for anyone interested in knowing more about the skaters involved, I highly recommend this book.

This book has interesting information on the childhoods, tribulations, and triumphs of Jamie Sale, David Pelletier, Shen Xue, Zhao Hongbo, and Elena Be