Review
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Title: Latter-day Saint Heroes and Heroines Stories of Courageous Saints Around the World
Author: Marlene Bateman Sullivan
Publisher: CFI/Cedar Fort
Genre : Non-Fiction/Histroical
Year Published: 2007
Number of Pages: 117
Binding: Soft
ISBN: 978-1-59955-068-8
Price: 11.99

Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton

In "Latter-day Saint Heroes and Heroines" Marlene Sullivan has attempted to compile a mix of well known church history stories with many lesser known or unknown ones, and present them in a short, readable format, suitable for those who are less familiar with church history.

I applaud her effort. I am a great believer in the importance of history and of these types of stories and I support all good attempts to preserve and pass them on to the next generation. Unfortunately for the author, a quick, one line summary of this book could be that it was a great idea, with poor execution.

To begin, let me mention her strong points. First, this book is easy to read. The stories are short and the writing and details are simple. Each story is one chapter long, with chapters varying in length from about two to eight pages. This makes it potentially a good book for new converts, teens, for reading to children, for use in FHE, talks, lessons, and for those unfamiliar with church history. Second, she did a pretty good job of mixing familiar church history stories with less familiar ones. Alongside well known stories about Ephraim K. Hanks, Joseph F. Smith, Samuel Smith, Amanda Smith, Jacob Hamblin, John Taylor, Mary Elizabeth Rollins, David W. Patten, and Drusillia Hendricks, you will find stories about "Brother" Collins, Anna Berg, "Sister Horsley", Joel Norris, Medford Wallace, Andrew Free, Sol Hale, and Marn Peterson.

Now for the book's weak points. The first is minor and may be a matter of opinion. Sister Sullivan refers to this collection as "Stories of Courageous Saints Around the World." While the mix of familiar and less familiar is good, most of the stories in the book take place in the U.S.A. and all of the rest except one are in North Europe (the one exception happens in Samoa ). I would expect some stories from a wider variety of places and cultures in a book of stories from "around the world."

The second problem is in the editing. This is especially bad since this is a second edition of the book and you would think that editorial errors would have been caught by now. In the contents Samuel H. Smith is incorrectly called Samuel K. Smith. The third chapter, on Jane Snyder, starts with this line, "Although Jane Snyder was a generally outgoing person, she was not one to let people push her around." Then at the end of the chapter, after quoting her rebuke to an anti-Mormon crowd the book contradicts itself and says, "her strong outburst surprised everyone who knew Jane, for she was normally a quiet, shy person." These are just two of several examples.

The book's worst problem is that there are quite a few mistakes, some of which are major, in its historical details. In the story on Samuel Smith, after mentioning the arrests of Joseph and Hyrum in Carthage, it says that he was, "unsure that his brothers were cognizant of the treacherous mob spirit that had *recently* overtaken the city." I don't pretend to know Samuel's motives, but his brothers were well aware of the mob spirit that had *long* been in that city.

In the chapter on Mary Elizabeth Rollins the author mistakenly puts the tarring and feathering of Bishop Partridge and the attack on the Phelps' printing press several weeks apart with the attack on the press second, when they took place on the same day and the attack on the press was first. Then in the end of the chapter she states that the two copies of the "Book of Commandments" that were given to Mary and her sister Caroline are now the only two in existence. I don't know how many copies still exist, but I understand that the LDS Church and the Community of Christ each own multiple copies as do several collectors, so there are more than two left.

A last example of this problem is in the chapter on Laura Phelps where the author mistakenly puts the tarring and feathering and attempted poisoning of Joseph Smith in Far West, Missouri in 1838, when it was really in Hiram , Ohio in 1832. After reading these particular stories I began to question the book's usefulness and credibility. After all, I figured, if she can make such big mistakes in such well known stories, how can I trust her to get it right on the less well known ones?

All in all, "Latter-day Saint Heroes and Heroines" is a great idea, but it should have had a lot more work done on it before it was released.