Review
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Title: Destroying Angel
Author: Charles M. Larson
Publisher: Zyrus Press
Genre: Fiction
Year Published: September 11, 2008
Number of Pages: 473
Binding: Paperback/Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-933990-18-7 (paperback) 978-1-933990-15-6 (hardcover)
Price: $16.95/$29.95

Reviewed by Laura Compton

Cleaning the closets. Airing the laundry. Feeding the living-room elephant. Is that what Charles M. Larson is doing in his first novel, “Destroying Angel”? It is marketed as a crime story dealing with a series of ritual murders somehow linked to the LDS church and its history, particularly the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of September, 1857. But it seems to be more of an exposé of all the skeletons in the Church’s closets, all the laundry in its washroom, and the great big elephant in its front room – polygamy.

Larson apparently wants to shine some light on all of the historical problems he can find with the LDS church and turn some reader’s views of the church upside down. He does so fairly even-handedly (why exaggerate when the truth is so colorful, after all), but by including everything from multiple versions of the First Vision, to problems with the Book of Mormon translation, to Mountain Meadows, to the Indian Placement Program, to charges of racism pre-1978, to Mark Hoffman, to modern-day public relations efforts and everything in between, the book sometimes comes across more as a soapbox than a story.

Even when less-than-flattering subjects are presented with a matter-of-fact tone (which most of Larson’s subjects are), because they are all included in one nearly 500-page volume, and because many of the subjects do not relate directly to the plot, one can’t help but wonder whether Larson has an agenda other than entertaining readers with a good story. The book, and the presentation of the warts in Mormondom’s history, would have been better served if some of the less-relevant warts were left out or saved for another storyline. After all, between 21st-century polygamy and 19th-century massacres, there’s plenty of sex and violence to fill a library without the extraneous details.

The story begins quickly as the reader is immersed in a hanging taking place and seen from the victim’s point of view. The images and language are strong enough to be realistic and graphic, but not to be gratuitous. The advantage of beginning the story this way is that the reader is hooked in to characters and action quickly and anticipates a page-turner of a mystery with some real meat to the plot and characters. It may also turn off readers who shy away from coarse language used by many American adults.

So, who are these main characters jumping into action as the book begins? First, we have Orrin Christensen, a self-described jack-Mormon working for the Utah Attorney General as the state’s “polygamy czar”. Christensen is called in to the investigation because a cryptic message at the crime scene leads investigators to suspect polygamists seeking vengeance against a former Governor’s family are to blame for the deaths of a whole family – parents and children. Christensen’s reason for existence in this novel is to be the guy who learns a bunch of historical facts about the church he was born into and then has to decide if he is going to accept or reject his religion as a result of his newly gained knowledge. His crisis of faith is magnified by the fact that his wife is a very faithful member who works in the Church Office Building and is a descendant of Joseph F. Smith.

Next, we have Bill Woodard, the federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security, called in to the investigation because the Patriot Act calls Utah’s string of murders “domestic terrorism”. As a non-Mormon who’s never been to Utah before, Bill is the perfect character to ask all the right questions of the polygamists, historians, investigators and even Temple Square missionaries. Larson uses Bill’s character to serve as the lecturee on nearly every aspect of Mormon belief, past or present, including blood atonement, dark-skinned Lamanites turning white, and the possible reasons behind Joseph Smith’s institution of plural marriage. Conveniently, Bill is a pilot and able to fly himself and others around the state, making it easy to investigate crime scenes in Utah County and then pop on down to St. George for an afternoon examining Mountain Meadows. His federal agent status also gives him some authority and classified weaponry to throw around when local yokels aren’t that interested in helping the investigators, as well.

Shannon Perkins is the up-and-coming newsgirl eager to make a name for herself as she stumbles on a few early criminal investigations. She uses her femininity to ingratiate herself with all the men she interviews, from highway patrolmen to federal agents to polygamists. Shannon grows up some during the course of events and loses some of her naïveté as she grapples with the horrendous crimes both past and present, yet her final allegiances at the end of the novel are predictable.

Various modern-day polygamists grace the pages of the novel with several non-stereotypical portrayals. There’s one fanatical prophet as well as a group of homophobic gun-loving teens bent on some kind of holy violence, but for the most part, polygamists are portrayed as the normal people they are: men and women who love their kids and are dedicated to living a life based on their own religious convictions. This gentle description of 21st-century polygamists is epitomized by Clark Adams, a wealthy artist with half a dozen wives and a myriad of social connections throughout the state. Clark’s character, a convert who joined the mainstream LDS church then left it in order to practice the Principle (polygamy), is the level-headed one that has the ability to pull the right questions out of people and provide the answers that solve spiritual and behavioral problems.

One cannot write a novel that deals with the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre without having a few Mormon historians included in the lineup. Larson gives us an apologist, a couple of born-in-the-church cynics, a couple of outsiders and a couple of disaffected former Mormons, more or less. And Will Bagley (whose Mountain Meadows book is plugged more than once). These historians spend pages and pages thrashing out details of the devastation that was Mountain Meadows, when about 160 unarmed men, women and children were killed in southern Utah. Much of their discussions and debates seemed irrelevant to moving the plot along, but if their main purpose was to provide “context” in the form of lighting up those closet skeletons and hanging out the old clothes, they were perfect. Plus, some of them provide great red-herrings.

Finally, there are the victims and perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre itself. Anyone who has ever read or heard anything about the facts behind the 1857 bloodbath will realize that there is no real way to depict this story “nicely.” It was violent, it was bloody, it was disturbing, it was done by faithful members of the LDS church who believed they were acting in the name of God. It was not done by Native Americans, and the cover-up blaming them was wrong. It is painful to read the descriptions of the battles, and it is painful to read the forensic descriptions of the people who examined the shattered remains.

So how does Larson tie all this in together? How do the violence at Mountain Meadows, the gentleness of most of the modern polygamists, the grisly nature of the ritualistic hangings across the state, and the spirituality of the polygamy czar and the federal investigator all get wrapped up together in one all-encompassing answer at the end of the story? In a very surprising and unforeseen way which, in itself could have been its own soapbox of a story. This is definitely not a story where you want to read the last chapter first.

The ending is such a twist on the plotline, though, that one could almost skip over all of the Mountain Meadows discussion and most of the dirty laundry hanging and pick up right at the very intense final shootout and not miss much at all. Readers might even feel used after having read through the tough details of the massacre when they come to the resolution and the massacre’s relevance, or lack thereof, is apparent. Perhaps, if Larson’s main purpose in writing this novel had been to create a suspenseful, thought-provoking crime story, he or his editor would have left out much of the details that try to strip away the perceived facade of niceness that encompasses the LDS church. Had Larson done that, the story would be more of a page-turner than it is, and it could be called gripping.

Was the massacre included to provide commentary or background on fanaticism? Was it part of a set of tools used to make the reader re-examine beliefs about religion in general or the LDS church in particular? Was it provided as a way to “get the facts” out to readers who missed the historians’ non-fiction examinations of the event? Or was it included because it’s a sensationalistic piece of history?

Whatever the reason, “Destroying Angel” has some fascinating parts, but may seem dry at times, especially for anyone already familiar with the “uncorrelated” version of LDS history. For those who have never run across some of these troublesome parts of LDS belief and practice, it will likely be shocking, just as it shocked Orrin Christensen. Those who refuse to see that the church is and always has been run by human beings very capable of making mistakes and acting with poor judgment, might go so far as to call this book anti-Mormon, but that would probably be just over the line of propriety. The final resolution of the novel does include some helpful advice for readers who find their faith shaken as their mental image of their religion is turned upside down, and for that olive branch, readers may be thankful.

So is Larson’s first novel truly a novel or is it a thinly veiled framework for showing the reader that perhaps everything they thought about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints might not have been correct after all? Perhaps the book’s hardcover release date says it all.

I realize this response is quite late in the game, but thought it might be still be appropriate:

Charles raises several issues in his commentary on my review, but his core issue seems to me to be related to the specifics about historical problems with the Mormon church. He appears to suppose that I am or was offended by their existence at all (not just their existence in his novel) and that I would prefer to have them die a quick and silent death. I am well aware of and sympathetic to the New Mormon History as meticulously presented to the world by people like D. Michael Quinn, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks, Todd Compton, Carmon Hardy, Dan Vogel, Richard Bushman, Will Bagley, etc. The contributions they've made to our understanding of non-whitewashed LDS history are tremendous and cannot be discounted. Their works are not anti-Mormon, any more than discussing the truths they've uncovered for us is anti-Mormon, and I personally believe one cannot understand the Mormon church unless one understands its true history – skeletons, elephants, warts and all.

My biggest complaint about the novel was not that it brought up these hard historical (and contemporary) facts, but, rather, that it brought up so many of them in ways that were merely tangential to the main plot lines. The novel would have been strengthened by snipping out some of the "hard parts" and saving them for inclusion – and closer examination – in future works.

I would encourage a secondary reading of my review with these thoughts in mind.

Laura