Book #3: Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith

Title: Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
Authors: Lina King Newell and Valeen Tippets Avery

First of all, after reading Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman right before Christmas, and following it up with the Juanita Brooks bio and this book (and Mansfield Park, which is not light reading), I'm definitely ready for some secular chick-lit. I seriously might need to take a trip to the nearest Barnes and Noble (at least a half hour away) to buy some fluff. I just read the latest Star magazine and my brain is still craving some junky stuff to read.

I guess I really don't know what to say about this book. I had already known about Joseph Smith's plural wives, already known that Emma hated polygamy, already knew that she and Brigham Young had a big falling out after Joseph's death, already knew that she married Lewis Bidamon and stayed in Nauvoo. I also knew that after about 150 years of being seen as an evil shrew my many Mormons, her reputation has recently been brushed up a little bit.

But knowing about something and reading about it in great detail are two entirely different things. Most of all, I feel profoundly sorry for Emma. I couldn't imagine being in her position (estranged from her parents and siblings, losing more than half of her children, being chased from her home by mobsters more than once, and then, on top of it all, sharing her home with women half her age who her husband had married). I can definitely understand the jealousy, the difficulty coming to grips with the revelation, the shame that would come from being kept from the whole truth and the frustration that would come from learning the truth. It doesn't shake my testimony-- I've always believed that Joseph Smith was a man with prophetic calling and not an infallible prophet (I love how Avery and Newell talk about that in the intro) but it does help me understand and respect Emma Smith a lot more.

Up next: some chick-lit, unless I can't make it to the store and start reading The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio first. But I'm in serious need of some fiction and Prizewinner is non-fiction. I have six books on reserve at the library but really need something light to cleanse my palate before digging in to those.

--originally published 1/25/06