Presented to: Gerald N. Lund
For: Like a Fire is Burning
The awards committee honored this novel, stating, "Benard DeVoto, Utah's first nationally prominent writer, once joked that his Mormon novel was by far the best book he was never going to write: God, the best storyteller, had made a better story out of Joseph Smith and the Mormon journeys than fiction could ever equal. Gerald Lund has not been daunted by DeVoto's warning, nor William Mulder's advice that we deal with Mormon experience on a smaller canvas; nor has he been dissuaded by the numerous failure of many who have tried to turn Mormonism's epic history into novels. In fact, he has set for himself the unprecedented task of a multi-volume set of novels, The Work and the Glory, covering the entire sage of the Restoration from 1820 to the present, focussed in the lives of early converts Mary Ann and Benjamin Steed and their descendants. Now that the second volume has been published, we can assess Lund's success--and we affirm with this award that is has been remarkable.
Like Pillar of Fire, the first volume of the series, the novel here honored is straightforward in approach and clear in purpose and effect: Lund writes in his introduction to Like a Fire is Burning: 'If the reader becomes swept up in the grandeur of the work of the Restoration, let it be remembered that it is God's work and his glory that is described in this story.' Lund has done careful research in religious and political history and in the relevant social and material culture and has created an interesting diverse, and constantly developing fictional family that is believably close to the great events and figures of early Church history and thus able to give us a fresh and moving view of those well-known events and people. The Steeds are diverse, from the uneasily yoked parents to the passionate sinners and passionate saints among their children, and Lund moves us with their own drama as it is both provoked and healed by the developing, dramatic demands and powers of the Mormon faith. The first two volumes are gripping and moving in large part because they are grounded in what most readers believe--or hope--are real and terribly important events, involving divine appearances, revealed scriptures, and restored power to save us from sin. In Like a Fire is Burning Lund takes us, believably, with the Steeds into the center of the Pentecostal experiences at the Kirtland Temple dedication. We wish him well as he takes us on into the tragedies of Kirtland and Nauvoo and the costly crossings--to the Great Basin and into the twentieth century."