Comments on: Rough Dawn Breaking

By: Meg Stout

Meg Stout — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:50:38 +0000

#8 – “If Edward is Joseph Smith, who is Jacob? Brigham Young or John Bennett?”

If Edward were Joseph and Bella were Elvira Cowles, then Jacob would be Jonathan Harriman Holmes (think Mormon Battalion/Sutter’s Mill).

Mike Newton would be a Brigham Young who couldn’t get Elvira to give him the time of day even when Joseph was out of the picture

The vampire James would be John Bennett – so fixed on having Elvira that he turns from friendship to murderous intent wrt Joseph.

And Charlie would be Austin Cowles, except in the Nauvoo version of this classic tale, the maiden’s father strikes the telling blow (more like the Vulturi leader, Aro) which leaves Elvira (Bella) to spend the rest of her life with Jonathan (Jacob).

Real Mormon women don’t pine to death merely because their beloved dies. Sheesh.

By: Ann Moulton Johnson

Ann Moulton Johnson — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:04:30 +0000

Please finish your novel quickly. It will be a great supplement to the current RS/Priesthood lesson manual.

By: Raymond Takashi Swenson

Raymond Takashi Swenson — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:48:56 +0000

While Card’s “Saints” does feature the relationship between its female protagonist and Joseph Smith, it is overall a pretty gritty story of a family reduced to poverty in Dickensian England because of the father’s abandonment of his wife and children, who eventually encounter Heber C. Kimball and emigrate to America during the Nauvoo period. It is a study of what called so many thousands of urban British people to abandon civilized England for a place they had never seen on the American frontier.

By: floridagirl

floridagirl — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:14:01 +0000

#24–Eww. I don’t know, but the thought of a bodice-ripper novel involving joseph smith gives me the heebies. It’s like your mom and dad talking about their sex lives.

By: Raymond Takashi Swenson

Raymond Takashi Swenson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:29:02 +0000

The character in Card’s “Saints” is not named Eliza R. Snow, but is Dinah Kirkham, an amalgamation of Eliza and an English convert, who joins the church along with her brother and travels to Nauvoo.

By: Ivan Wolfe

Ivan Wolfe — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:54:22 +0000

bbell -

That’s Orson Scott Card’s “Saints” (aka “A Woman of Destiny.”)

By: bbell

bbell — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:54:32 +0000

Thee is actually a historical fiction type LDS novel that involved a fictional account of JS and Eliza. Where Eliza actually watches JS take of his shirt to wrestle or play baseball and she gets all caught up in his shirtless form. Later they are married polygamously. I was dating a girl who was reading this novel in the early 1990′s and she showed me the passage. Maybe another commentator can recall the name of the book.

By: ZD Eve

ZD Eve — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:03:09 +0000

Kaimi, I eagerly await the next installment!

By: Rameumptom

Rameumptom — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:47:29 +0000

LDS Bodice Rippers. Won’t we have to convert Fabio first, so he can do the covers?

By: Raymond Takashi Swenson

Raymond Takashi Swenson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:43:50 +0000

Re: Baseball–As Ken Burns noted in his TV documentary on baseball, one of the earliest historical records of the sport comes from a game played by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. (Seriously).

As for the association of Mormons and Vampires, a recent BYU Studies article documented the extensive way in which the vampirism theme was used to characterize the way Mormon missionaries would mesmerize young women into joining their harems, right into the era of early motion pictures.

Clearly, both the polygamy stories and the modern vampire novels rely for their appeal on the fantasies of men and women about magical sexual potency. Americans WANT Mormons to be polygamous, just as they want vampires to be real, so they can think about someone getting away with stuff that ordinary people are afraid to do. They keep hoping that the monotony of modern Mormon monogamy is just a facade. So they get “Big Love” on HBO.