Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mormonism is among the most complex, influential, and controversial religious movements native to American shores. Most students of American religion and culture have read at least one book on the subject, often by celebrated scholars such as Leonard J. Arrington, Richard L. Bushman, or Jan Shipps. Less casual students who wish to probe beyond this core might consider Valeen Tippetts Avery's biography of the youngest son of Mormonism's founding prophet, Joseph Smith. Through the prism of a distinctive and tragic American life, Avery illuminates what second-generation Mormonism was, was not, almost was, was indeed in alternate and dissenting form, or might well have become with only slight change in historical interaction.

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Five months after Joseph Smith surrendered his life to an Illinois mob in June 1844, Emma Smith gave birth to David Hyrum Smith, who grew to be a charismatic and gifted man: a poet, painter, preacher, philosopher, theologian, essayist, naturalist, church leader, and singer. He also inherited a rich and clouded religious legacy, partly obscured by a mother who, in her own pain and principles, denied him knowledge of his father's polygamous ways. High hopes for this heir of the Prophet resonated throughout Mormondom. The largest body of believers who followed Brigham Young west, the primary dissident group among those Utah saints, and smaller bands who had remained in the Midwest—some of whom "reorganized" into a separate church, estranged from Young and his polygamous New Israel—all hoped that this royal son would sanction and perhaps eventually lead their organization.

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