This book has been published to significant acclaim, winning the Best Book award from the Mormon History Association for 2001. I agree with much of this praise, but nevertheless have serious reservations about some aspects of…
As Red Water opens, John D. Lee, an adopted son of Brigham Young, a member of the Council of Fifty, a leader in the Host of Israel (the private militia formed by General Joseph Smith),…
Whenever I visited my grandparents, I always knew where to check for Granddad. As a means of escaping household routine, he maintained a remote kingdom, a long shed deep in the interior of the backyard…
Out there in the yard
winter drips silver
and bombardiers through branches its excesses
of yesterday. White.
Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 143–145
Sometimes, I seem to be the only person in the entire church who
knows that it’s okay to believe in evolution and still be a faithful, believing Mormon.
Through the glow
of dashboard lights
reflected in the glass,
I watch a plow drop its blade
and scrape the ice,
knicking the blacktop.
The story of Helaman and his stripling warriors is well known to students of the Book of Mormon. In brief, around 75 B.C. the people of Ammon, who originally were Lamanites, converted to the Lord…
On November 22, 1855, eleven-year-old John Willard Young, son of Brigham Young, received his endowment, undoubtedly accompanied by his father. Brigham Young clearly felt there was something out of the ordinary in John Willard, which…
—that wood could come in
that thin and blonde
for kindling
after the dark bark,
after the ax whack
and the crack
of white opening,
the stria of wood
gouging, indenting
my armloaded skin
The year was 1983. Sister Mercedes Pico de Coello was dying of tuberculosis, coughing up blood. A frail and thin 43-year-old mother of twelve, her life could probably have been saved for $200. As a missionary, I had baptized her in 1980. As a BYU student, I had just spent $850 for this return visit to Ecuador. Neither of us was aware that her illness could be fatal if untreated. With an annual family income of $1200, she could not afford the treatment she needed. I considered giving her the $200, but ultimately I did not do so. Three years later she died from the disease.