the cultural history of the book of mormon: volume two B: Follies Epic and Novel

MOST OF WHAT JOSEPH SMITH seemed to have hoped for, with respect to Saints on the Mississippi, came to an end with his death. The Saints did as they always do, picked up the pieces and carried on. Once in Utah, or Deseret as they insisted it be named, Mormons realized they were out of the lands Joseph Smith called Zion; living beyond the End they once thought would come in 1845. “What are we doing here,” you can still hear them asking in between the lines of sermon after sermon; in Brigham Young’s belligerence and retreat; in calling one another prophet, seer, and revelator, titles more hopeful than accurate; and in every apostles’ eagerly undertaken mission to Europe. The Book of Mormon was no help answering, after the Lord’s Chosen People had wandered to this desert. In Utah, as we see here, Mormons fell outside their myth: beyond the geography of Joseph’s American Eden, while the Lord’s Coming seemed long overdue. They looked for plume and pillar of fire over Sinai, for seraphim to place coals upon their lips, for the City of God to descend, its people to kiss their poverty from dry cheeks. They were Israel gathering. But that was all in the future, when Joseph Smith voiced the Lord in January 1841, and warned of them working cursings by their own hands. In this Part B of Volume Two, the cultural history explores the implications of their move from Nauvoo to Utah, from Joseph to Brigham, from Restorationism to Zionism. It shows what happens to Saints when they leave their map—the Book of Mormon—far behind, having so long misread it. Like what it says about kings, for example . . .