Post-Mormon Stories
The Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith’s First Novel
A typical first novel is a dumping ground for its author’s childhood traumas. The Book of Mormon is no different.
WARNING: This essay contains graphic descriptions of primitive surgery and child harm that some readers may find disturbing.
In January 1994, when I was 26 years old, I sat down in my bare, cold room to write my first novel.
In many ways, yes, the conditions were ideal. I had no commitments, nothing else to do, nowhere to be, and no worries for the moment about money. I’d been honing my craft for years with short fiction, and my third story for a major magazine had just appeared in print. I’d taken a stab already at the story I wanted to tell, in the form of a 30,000-word novella, and I’d thought long and hard about how best to expand that piece to novel length. I knew my invented world forward and backward. Like a monk in his cell, there was nothing to distract me from the task I felt called to complete.
The hard part was starting, but once I did, the words gushed out of me like I’d slashed a swollen artery. I wrote for eight hours a day almost from the start, often taking meals at my little desk. I had the general shape of the book in my head…
