Book Reviews

Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work.

By JACKSON J. BENSON (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996 xx + 472 pp $32.95.)

In this engaging study Jackson J Benson has chronicled the life and work of Wallace Stegner, whom h e characterizes as "the dean of Western writers" and "possibly the most accomplished person of American letters of our time."

Stegner's varied accomplishments, literary and otherwise, were indee d impressive During an incredibly productive life that spanned eighty-four years, he produced thirteen novels, the most notable being The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943), All the Little Live Things (1967), Angle of Repose (1971), and The Spectator Bird (1976) He also authored dozens of short stories published in a wide variety of periodicals ranging from popular mainstream to the scholarly and esoteric His works include a significant body of nonfiction, both history and biography. Of particular interest to Utah audiences are his Mormon Country (1942), Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (1950), Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (1954), The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964), and The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto (1974).

Stegner was, moreover, an accomplished, dedicated teacher who for some twenty-five years directed the creative writing progra m at Stanford University, tutoring such notable future writers as Larry McMurtry, Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, and Eugene Burdick Also a social activist, he wrote and spoke out against racial discrimination exhibited toward blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, and othe r ethnic minorities. His strongly stated views received exposure in a collection of essays, One Nation (1945).

As a crusader, Stegner devoted his greatest energies to conservation and environmental protection, evident in his long involvement with th e Sierra Club. He was in the forefront of a successful campaign stopping a major dam project in eastern Utah, thus preserving that region's distinctive Dinosaur National Monument Furthering this effort was his written work This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers (1955) produce d unde r the sponsorship of the Sierra Club. Stegner's skills as an environmental activist caught the attention of Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall who appointed the author as a special assistant in late 1961.

These varied aspects of Stegner's eventful life and career are effectively presented by Benson, a professor of American literature at San Diego State University. Vividly portrayed is Stegner's unstable, trouble d childhood, mad e worse by his father's impulsive, erratic behavior that included varied get-rich-quick schemes (all failures) and illegal activities as a bootlegger This compelled the family to move numerou s times—first from North Dakota to Washington state; then to Saskatchewan, Canada; from there to Great Falls, Montana ; and finally to Salt Lake City—all by the time Wallace had reached his twelfth birthday Stegner's formative years were further marred by constant conflict with his domineering, often abusive father This difficult relationship, carefully outlined by Benson, "haunted" the future author "all his life," profoundly affecting the nature and subjects of his varied writings, particularly The Big Rock Candy Mountain and Recapitulation (1979) By contrast, young Wallace found comfort in the positive relationship he enjoyed with his mother whom he characterized as long-suffering but also "a nest builder."

Carefully presented by Benson is Stegner's sojourn in Salt Lake City where he lived for ten years, from age twelve to twenty-two—a place he came to regard as his hometown Here he came of age and received much of his formal education, graduating first from East High School and then the University of Utah where he majored in English. Stegner was also affected by the dominan t Mormo n religion

Although he never embraced the faith, the Latter-day Saints had "a profound effect on Wallace's life, his philosophy, and his career." He had many "close [Mormon] friends." His "first big romance" was with a Mormon girl whom he considered marrying Also appealing was the fact that "the Mormons seemed to stand for everything that was the opposite of his father's life and goals."

In general, Benson has produced a vivid portrait of Wallace Stegner, making the reader aware of his triumphs an d trials within the context of his multifaceted activities There are, however, several inaccuracies or misrepresentations that detract from this otherwise effective work. Benson is incorrect in characterizing the University of Utah as "a Mormon institution." Stegner's close friend and fellow writer Bernard DeVoto was not "an ex-Mormon," nor had he "grown u p a Mormon." Benson is wrong in stating that Walt Disney "proposed to mak e [Mineral King, California] a ski resort in the late forties." Also inaccurate is his assertion that Stegner's The Gathering of Zion represented "the first time" that the Mormo n story "had been told from a friendly, but relatively neutral point of view, motivated neither to propagandize for the Mormon faith nor to blacken the Mormon reputation."

These minor problems nothwithstanding, Benson has produced a sensitive work, effectively presentin g a major literary figure—one whose influence transcended his native region, the Far West, and extended to American society at large.

NEWELL G. BRINGHURST College of the Sequoias Visalia, California

The Legacy of Mormon Furniture: The Mormon Material Culture, Undergirded by Faith, Commitment, and Craftsmanship.

By MARILYN CONOVER BARKER (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1995 144 pp $29.95.)

This book sets a lofty goal for itself: ".. to promote understanding of the importance of this (Mormon furniture's) legacy of influence on presentday Mormo n culture and American material culture as a whole" (p. 9). Unfortunately, it falls short The photographs by Scott Peterson are elegant; indeed one of the primary contributions of this volume is the fine photography of the objects, many of which have never been well-photographed, partly due to access issues. Th e final chapter, by Stephen Shepherd, on graining and other faux finishes, contains useful information The rest of the book is largely a reiteration of the similarly inadequate 1976 volume by Connie Morningstar, Early Utah Furniture.

The narrative often lacks focus and generates far mor e questions than it answers The relevance of much of the information in the first chapter, in which Mormon history is summarized, is never mad e clear. In places, the intended audience seems to shift from page to page; at one point the writing seems aimed at general audiences who know little about Mormon history, and, then, with th e use of cabinetmaking terms that may be unfamiliar to most generalists, it seems aimed at collectors or scholars. But the information presented is such that collectors or scholars would likely already know it, and they will be frustrated with the inadequate documentation

The book lacks careful editing In some places, illustrations cited in the text seem to have n o relationship to the subject being discussed. There are a few typos ("Colonial Juarez" instead of "Colonia Juarez," for instance—p 63) Additionally, statements like "Comparison of the regions stylistically shows that outside the traditional furniture made in all the territory, there are few similarities in details" (p 122) cry out for expansion and explanation of meaning. Mention is made of a "new style" emerging (p. 113) without making it clear to the reader what the elements of this new style are.

Th e book could have benefited from the inclusion of a glossary of terms. Most generalists will no t be familiar with terms like "apron," "splat," "stile," "harvest table," etc. Such readers would also probably have appreciated a care guide, particularly in regard to finishes It also would have been useful for the photos to illustrate comparisons made in the text. Without clearly captioned illustrations, most people will have no idea what is being discussed in this sentence: "These chair makers were from England an d produced fancy chairs in a beautiful mix of Yorkshire and East Anglia English styles" (p. 44).

There is still a crying need for a wellresearched, well-documented, and well-considered book on Mormo n furniture. While Barker clearly has an understanding of aspects of material culture and furnishings history, her volume adds little to our knowledge and understanding of Mormon culture.

ELAINE THATCHER Santa Fe, New Mexico

Same-sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-century Americans: A Mormon Example.

By D. MICHAEL QUINN. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. x + 477 pp. $29.95.)

This boo k is sure to be hailed in some circles and excoriated in others, for it addresses a subject about which few people can be neutral. Though the term "same-sex dynamics" is meant to encompass all same-sex behavior, nonerotic as well as erotic (homosocial, homopastoral, homotactile, homoemotional, homoromantic, homoenvironmental are terms offered in the boo k to convey the scope and pervasiveness of socially, culturally, and religiously recognizable non-erotic same-sex dynamics), this subject will make many readers uneasy when developed in connection with Mormon history, especially when it becomes clear that the nineteenth-century documentation is being deployed to furnish a context for discussion of twentieth-century developments in LDS church policy.

Through his earlier publications, the author, Michael Quinn, has demonstrated his deep knowledge of LDS historical materials. He now displays in addition an encyclopedic command of scholarship and criticism attendant upon same-sex issues. In voluminous chapter notes he engages in detailed debate about same-sex dynamics from both his left and his right, as it were, and evenhandedly takes issue with writers from either camp as needed "This study," he says in the introduction, "is not designed to be politically correct or religiously correct."

Quinn uses wide-ranging ethnographic and historical data in support of the claim (not original to him) that while there has been a constant ratio of opposite-sex to same-sex orientation throughout human experience, the cultural meanings attached to the range of opposite-sex and same-sex behavior will differ widely from one historical period or geographic locale to another A second claim, fully supported with documentary evidence, is that, "peculiar" as nineteenth-century Mormonism may have been in every other significant area of social, domestic, and religious life, it was right in the American mainstream with regard to social relations among persons of the same sex. These two streams of evidence combine to suggest that LDS leaders who reached adulthood in the nineteenth century differed vastly in their attitudes about same-sex dynamics from those achieving adulthood in the twentieth, and that this difference has had enormous impact upon the development not only of church administrative policy but possibly even of church doctrine.

Readers living in today's homophobia-drenched culture will be surprised, even shocked, to learn how intense and physically demonstrative nineteenth-century Americans were in their friendships with others of the same sex. Men slept in the same bed with male friends, and women with female friends, for weeks or years on end Same-sex friends of both genders wrote one another passionate declarations of love and kissed on the lips to show their mutual affection. Such same-sex cultural display held favor during the nineteenth century in part because of the general tone of overwrought flowery romanticism that characterized the age but more pointedly because of a pervasive fear of nonmarital heterosexual contact that resulted in a rigid segregation of the sexes in almost all aspects of American life.

No less than mainstream Americans, nineteenth-century Mormons were homosocial, homotactile, and homoemotional. Joseph Smith himself favored same-sex social dancing and male-male closeness of all sorts, at one point remarking, "it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation." The Prophet also enjoyed what was noted in 1842 as a "David and Jonathan" relationship with a male LDS church member, and several pairs of church leaders also went on record as "David and Jonathan" in succeeding decades. As a matter of church policy, Mormon officials shared the beds of local leaders whose homes they visited while traveling on church business A diary records, without comment, that when one LDS official and his wife traveled out of town to the home of another LDS official and his wife, the guest husband slept with the host husband and the guest wife with the host wife. Mormon missionaries were expected not only to love one another but to share the same bed In the ordinary lives of nineteenth-century Mormon men and women, then, the American mainstream social epistemology did not register what would doubtless be seen today as unseemly or unacceptable behavior. The same-sex dynamic in all its forms was deeply embedded, as natural as breathing

Within this context of garden-variety homosociality, there were presumably among nineteenth-century Mormons a number of same-sex erotic relationships, invisible in the homosocial landscape, and Quinn's book brings forth every available scrap of reliable information in support of that inference. Other Mormon homoerotic behaviors and relationships were more fully documentable, and these are treated in the book as well The evidence points to a nineteenth-century Mormon culture that was exceedingly tolerant of homoerotic behaviors Joseph Smith is reported to have interpreted the story of Sodom to mean that God destroyed that city not for the usual reason but "for rejecting the prophets." Sodomy was missing from the list of sins requiring blood atonement, a glaring omission considering the Levitical source of the other blood sins Sodomy was not even a crime in Utah until 1876, when the territory made a wholesale adoption of the California criminal code.

The author's documentation of Mormon tolerance for same-sex dynamics of all sorts in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century gives poignancy to the dramatic shift in Mormon policy that has occurred more recently at the direction of LDS church leaders who have reached adulthood in the twentieth century instead of the nineteenth. In 1959 a program of "aversion therapy" for homosexuals was instituted at BYU. In 1962, LDS missionaries in Western Europe were ordered to sleep in separate beds In 1968 the category "homosexual acts" (later "homosexuality") was added to the church's list of excommunicative sins. In 1969, LDS men who had homosexual leanings were instructed by a church official to try to force themselves to marry women. During the decade-long national debate about the Equal Rights Amendment which ended with the Amendment's demise in 1982, fear of lesbianism was used by the church as an anti-ERA weapon. And in 1976 a church leader advocated the use of violence by LDS missionaries against fellow missionaries who appeared to evince same-sex orientation. The evidence of Quinn's book can be taken to suggest that the homophobic policy of the LDS church today is counter to the spirit of the early church, even to the words of the prophet himself.

So thoroughly documented is SameSex Dynamics that there will be no opportunity for anyone to criticize it on scholarly grounds: In support of its 200 pages of text is an equal number of pages of notes It is a significant work However, its message will not be welcome in certain quarters, and it is therefore unlikely to be read by those in the greatest need of knowing what it contains.

POLLY STEWART Salisbury State University Salisbury, Maryland

Winning the West for Christ: Sheldon Jackson and Presbyterianism on the Rocky Mountain Frontier, 1869-1880.

By NORMAN J BENDER (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. xiv + 265 pp. $40.00.)

This book is on all accounts a major contribution to the history of religion in America Historians of Presbyterianism as well as lay persons interested in the history of their denomination will be captivated by the book But it is not just a piece of Presbyterian history. It is a portrait of religious life in the American West in which the focus happens to be on Presbyterianism. The reader is from the very opening pages to the final paragraphs drawn into the dynamics of life in the late nineteenthcentury West as experienced by countless Americans for whom church and community were virtually synonymous.

Central to the narrative is the boundless energy of the indefatigable Sheldon Jackson, a man fired with a thoroughly evangelical agenda calling for the winning of the West for Christ. Presbyterians who lean toward liberal theologies will be struck by the uncompromisingly evangelical zeal that fueled their faith's drive westward. Nothing less than the salvation of souls was at stake But in the American West the salvation of souls went hand in hand with salvation from the various forms of wickedness that pervaded western life, especially those associated with drunkenness and carousing.

"Creating a proper appearance" (title of chapter 3) thus became an important part of the Presbyterian missionary thrust: those won for Christ were to live a life of separation from worldliness Separateness, which included proper attire as well as proper behavior, became the hallmark of the "good Presbyterian."

As Bender's study makes clear, this evangelistic project, as undertaken by Jackson and his co-laborers, was a strictly Presbyterian undertaking. For readers conditioned by decades of ecumenism, the disinterest in cooperating with other Protestant bodies is bound to seem perplexing Chapter 3 describes the outright rivalry between Presbyterians and Congregationalists in Colorado Within Presbyterian circles, relations with other sects was an issue that divided "Old School" from "New School" Presbyterians. Sheldon Jackson belonged unabashedly to the Old School, and his mission reflected its intense denominational loyalty. The winning of the West for Christ was clearly best done in the Presbyterian way.

Other interesting facets of Bender's account of the Presbyterian expansion westward unde r Jackson's leadership include the blatantly hostile attitude toward Catholics (which reflects the pervasiveness of nineteenth-century conspiracy thinking within Presbyterian circles), the occasional tension between the priorities of the Board of Hom e Missions with its staid East Coast mentality and those of die often proactive and uncompliantJackson, the importance of the theological seminaries as suppliers of missionaries for the West, the role of women's auxiliary groups as support systems for the western expansion, Jackson's assault on the "formidable fortress" of Mormonism in Utah, and, of course, the educational programs launched by Jackson—resulting in such institutions as Westminster College (originally Sheldon Jackson College) in Salt Lake City.

Bender's scholarship is superb. He has utilized every conceivable type of primary source material, including government documents, church archives of various kinds, sermons, letters, and newspapers; and he has surveyed a wide spectrum of secondary material The result of this painstaking research is an authoritativeness that makes this work a monument in its field of study.

BERNARD WEISS University of Utah

Explorers, Traders, and Slavers: Forging the Old Spanish Trail, 1678-1850.

By JOSEPH P. SANCHEZ (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997 xxii + 186 pp $29.95.)

Joseph P Sanchez's Explorers, Traders, and Slavers sheds additional light on many obscure aspects of early Spanish Trail history. The avowed aim of this work is to "fill a gap briefly addressed by LeRoy R Hafen and Ann W Hafen in their celebrated book Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles"—to highlight the Hispanic influences in the development of the "old" Spanish Trail To that end the author has succeeded.

Nevertheless, this volume directly challenges the widely supported, well documented traditional interpretation of the Spanish Trail route. Sanchez suggests that the main-traveled, northward-looping trail that passed through the upper Colorado Plateau was merely a "variant" of a southern route pioneered by the New Mexican merchant Antonio Armijo in 1829. His line of march from New Mexico generally followed the present Utah-Arizona line westward to the vicinity of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River Passing south of Las Vegas, the trail continued on to southern California via the Amargosa and Mojave rivers Sanchez claims that "Armijo's route served as the basic line of march westward." He further asserts that it "became a favored route to California for the next twenty years [1829-49], as New Mexicans used it as a trade and immigration trail to the west coast" (p 104) Unfortunately, the author fails to provide supporting evidence for his claims

Although Sanchez shows much familiarity with the Hispanic references, having culled a large amount of his information from scholarly journals, he overlooks several important sources in his review of Spanish Trail related literature. For example, he does not cite The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah Smith (1977), edited by George R Brooks, the published personal account of Smith's 1826-27 journey to California. Sanchez never mentions Elizabeth von Til Warren's 1974 master's thesis which claims that Armijo's route had little impact on the developmen t of the Spanish Trail. He also makes n o mention of the accounts cited by the Hafens about the New Mexican traders who joine d the William Wolfskill-George C Yount party on its 1830-31 path-breaking trek to California—following the general northern course of the Spanish Trail. Much of the value of the Sanchez study rests on his translation of the two diaries of Jua n Maria Antonio de Rivera describing his 1765 expeditions into the region of present Utah Yet Sanchez does not mention Austin N Leiby's 1985 Ph.D dissertation which published for the first time a translation of the journals.

In Sanchez's review of the origins of the Spanish Trail he gives us a well-written narrative of the expeditions of Rivera, Dominguez an d Escalante, Francisco Tomas Hermenegild o Garces, and Juan Bautista de Anza He forges a handful of trail-related diemes into a series of essays presented in roughly chronological order. Although much of the material referenced has been previously harvested by other scholars, this volume gives it a wider audience Sanchez's work points the way to further research into an area often ignored in Spanish Trail studies

STEVEN K MADSEN Sandy, Utah

Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie andJoseph Smith in Retrospect.

Edited by NEWELL G BRINGHURST (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996 xiv + 241 pp Cloth, $34.95; Paper, $17.95.)

I first read No Man Knows My History two decades ago when I was a burgeoning young skeptic. The elderly librarian, a friend of my mother, seemed shocked when I presented the book for checkout After scolding me for wanting to read what she had never read but felt was an "anti-Mormon" work, she disdainfully placed the book in a brown paper bag before handing it to me.

Newell Bringhurst, currently working on a biography of Fawn M Brodie, has assembled a collection of seven essays celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Brodie's No Man Knows My History. This was Brodie's first book and certainly, at least within Mormon circles, her most controversial one.

Bringhurst's subtitle somehow suggests the tantalizing idea of Fawn Brodie promenading arm-in-arm with Joseph Smith. Th e book begins with William Mulder's endearing tribute to Brodie's life and accomplishments followed by Bringhurst's introduction The author then favors us with two chapters, one a brief biography of the biographer herself, the other a retrospective overview of the praise and criticism that have been heaped upon No Man Knows My History in the past half century.

Marvin S Hill criticizes Brodie for her personal bias and for secularizing Joseph Smith and the religious movement he founded in 1830 Hill's major thesis is that No Man Knows My History fails to properly recognize Mormonism as a "religious movement and Smith a religious leader."

Mario S De Pillis, in a more sympathetic treatment of Brodie and her book, characterizes it as "the landmark and still unreplaced biography of Joseph Smith." Observing that Brodie's personality was "mingled with the work itself even more than usual with historical works," De Pillis added the astute observation that she "wrote this naturalistic explanation of the founding prophet's life not only because she had disaffiliated with Mormonism but also as a way of disaffiliating."

Lavina Fielding Anderson's essay focuses on the literary methods evident in Brodie's master work After an absorbing assessment of techniques used, which Anderson describes as "tools of fictional effect," she concludes that many historians could learn a "great deal from studying Brodie's writing techniques."

Tod Compton next provides a chapter on Fawn Brodie's treatmen t of Joseph Smith's plural wives and polygamy After noting that "anyone who sets out to seriously study Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages must use the appendix to Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History as a starting point," Compton concludes with an observation, often overlooked by Brodie's critics, that she did not have access to many sources now available to scholars.

The final chapter in the book, written by Roger D Launius, is an examination of Fawn Brodie and the legacy of "Scholarly Analysis of Mormonism." Launius concludes his essay with the ringing tribute: "The virtuosity of Brodie's marshalling of evidence, which was admittedly not particularly new, the potency of her vision of Smith, the power of her prose, and the sheer opulence of her interpretation made No Man Knows My History the significant book that it became."

I liked this book. It makes a notable contribution to the study of both Fawn Brodie and Joseph Smith's multi-layered mystique Furthermore, despite more than five decades of unrelenting criticism from orthodox Mormon scholars, No Man Knows My History has proven to be a major impetus in the quest for a less apologetic, more objective Mormon history. Perhaps no other book, aside from the Book of Mormon itself, has become so readily identified with our culture.

RICHARD S VAN WAGONER Lehi, Utah