An Experiment in Mormon Publishing | Gordon T. Allred, The Valley of Tomorrow, and Sara and Irene Black, Strangers on Earth

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The publishers of The Valley of Tomorrow and Strangers on Earth are moving to fill a very real need for suitable reading for young adults. Most books for younger readers are appropriate for all children, including Mormons. But when readers get into high school, beyond the horse story stage, beyond the age when writers, publishers, teachers and librarians feel a definite responsibility for the moral education of the reader, there has been little to offer the compulsive bookworm. In the days of Gene Stratton Porter and Grace S. Richmond any adult novel on the shelf was appropriate reading for this age level. This has changed completely. The emphasis of Latter-day Saint publishers has been upon instructional and study materials; so called “nonbooks”—collections, anthologies, commentaries, sermons—have poured from our presses. It is a reason for cheering that both Bookcraft and Deseret Book Company have recognized the need for books that may be read for enjoyment. 

When Marvin Wallin of Bookcraft decided to do something about publishing material for the high school age reader he commissioned Gordon Allred to write a book which would be “realistic, believable, positive, wholesome, faith promoting and testimony building.” If anyone could write such a book it would be Mr. Allred, who is a devoted Latter-day Saint and a gifted writer. Mr. Wallin distributed copies of Valley of Tomorrow to L.D.S. seminaries, together with a questionnaire for each reader. Some responses were “didn’t seem possible or real,” “stories like this are always being told but never seem to happen to a close friend . . . who can testify and verify similar incidents,” “It seems to be just another story the author has twisted to fit his purposes,” and “too pat”; but the overwhelming majority of both young readers and seminary teachers found that they could identify with Kelly and his problems, that the story was realistic, that it was faith promoting, and that they were better for having read the book. Although sixteen-year-old Kristine Haynes of Yuba City, California, thought the book would make dull reading for non-Mormons, she wrote, “When his [Kelly’s] bishopric went up into the mountains to pray it made me feel the wonderful power of fasting and prayer. I specially liked the Bishop; he is the kind of man I expect a Bishop to be. He was my favorite person in the book.” 

But a reviewer must ask whether or not writing with such clearly defined purposes can produce excellence in literature. Compare Valley of Tomorrow with Irene Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly, last year’s Newbery Award book, and the difference between a teaching instrument and a book of high literary quality becomes apparent. It is not the fault of the author that the book seems contrived, pat, preachy. Gordon Allred is a very fine writer, indeed, whose skill, evident in his excellent outdoor stories, is apparent in parts of this book. Latter-day Saint novelists must ask themselves if they can set themselves a “lesson”—in this book Mr. Allred has a whole host of “lessons”—illustrate the lesson with character and plot, and still come up with a book that is comparable in literary excellence with the books the young people are reading from the high school reading lists. Excellent books are expected to make “moral declarations”; for example, Golding’s Lord of the Flies or Conrad’s Lord Jim (both on high school lists), but specific teaching of doctrine is something else. 

A passage from Gustave Flaubert’s Intimate Notebook is relevant to Mr. All red’s dilemma in writing his book. 

If you begin your book telling yourself: it must prove this or that, the reader must come away from it religious, or ungodly, or erotic—you will write a bad book, because in composing it you have offended against truth, distorted the facts. Ideas flow spontaneously, following an inevitable, natural course. If, for any purpose whatever, you try to make them take a direction that isn’t their own, everything is wrong. You must let characters limn themselves according to their own logic; action must develop of itself. Everything must grow freely, and you must do no forcing in one direction or another. 

Strangers on Earth is an historical novel about a time and a place of which we know so little that the Latter-day Saint reader will be intrigued immediately —the colony of Cave Valley in Old Mexico just before and during the time of Pancho Villa. Action and suspense are inherent in the material. But the reader wishes over and over again that the book was Sara Hancock Black’s memoirs rather than a novel. (Sara Black was born in Cave Valley in 1893 and is evidently Faith Ann of the story.) 

It takes tremendous skill to turn memoirs into fiction. The writer, bound by his “memories,” isn’t free to let the story build itself, follow its own course. Too frequently it is apparent that the plot is contrived and superimposed upon the material, too frequently personal or family interest in certain incidents, in certain attitudes, in certain people, keeps the author from being selective in character and detail. In Strangers on Earth the hero, David, doesn’t enter the story until chapter eight and then in an episode which could have been used as a flash-back in a much later chapter. Perhaps the authors thought of Faith Ann’s parents as the principal characters of the book and wanted to trace them from their coming to the Valley to their being expelled. This organization would have been perfect for memoirs but not for a novel since Joel and his courageous wife are background characters after the real story begins. All through the book there are incidents which have had special meaning for the Hancock family, one supposes, like the attempt on the part of Manuela Trujillo to buy the blond child. These incidents would be suitable for memoirs but they don’t lead anywhere in the novel. 

In spite of the excellent material, Strangers on Earth lacks suspense. Of course Hernandez will “come to realize,” of course Stendal left his home under a cloud and will return to justify himself, of course Faith Ann will marry David in spite of the obstacles the authors dangle in the way of this union. The real interest of the story lies in Sara Black’s vivid memories of the place and the period. The contrived plot and sub-plots that these memories are bent to serve weaken the impact of historical truth. 

We can all be grateful that before her death Sara Black, with the cooperation of her daughter, wrote this material into a book for us, even though she did not choose the best form for its telling. It is hoped that her notes have been preserved and will be available to students. 

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We can be grateful, too, to Bookcraft and Deseret Book Company for making a beginning in the much needed area of entertaining books for young people. Should these publishers wish to make an additional contribution to ward putting excellent Mormon material into the hands of readers—children, young adults, and adults—they might read carefully all Mormon books brought out by Eastern and West Coast and University publishers, select those that are honest, not sensational, and promote them with all the zeal that they put into the promotion of their own publications. This seems a great deal to ask, probably too much of companies that after all must guard their dividends, but doing this would bring many excellent books to the attention of readers, would encourage our best writers who are now published by national presses to use more Mormon materials, and lessen the risk the Eastern publishers run in publishing non-sensational Mormon material since they could count on Church readership added to the conservative readership they now depend on. 

Quite the opposite attitude has been taken in the past, if I may judge from my own experience. The Deseret Book Company has been most cooperative in handling my books with Iranian backgrounds, but in March when I enquired regarding the sale of my Over the Mormon Trail in an Ogden bookstore the head of the department told me that the book wasn’t even listed on the Deseret Book Company’s distribution list. This is a carefully researched book which was published in Chicago and which has been read by perhaps a hundred thousand boys and girls in school and public libraries throughout the United States and Canada.

Bookcraft and Deseret Book Company have certainly made a start in the right direction. Perhaps it is now up to the readers to applaud this start through support of these ventures.

The Valley of Tomorrow. By Gordon T. Allred. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, 243 pp. $3.50.

Strangers on Earth. By Sara and Irene Black. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1966, 361 pp. $4.95.