Thorns of Glory, page 19
No artistic guidebook exists on what crosses the line and what does not, except for the Light of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Unfortunately, even these influences can be interpreted as subjective by the individuals who claim their influence. I believe our Father in Heaven can always provide us with perfect solutions to our artistic dilemmas, but He doesn’t always seem willing to guide our every keystroke or compose every sentence. So, as with any Latter-day Saint whose career is to serve his fellow man (and I can’t think of any whose careers don’t), I do my best to live in harmony with God’s commandments, simultaneously pleading for Him to grant guidance and offer occasional glimpses when possible to help me to create what He will find pleasing. I will assuredly fall short, but I think it’s still important to strive for this ideal. We should acknowledge that we will all, artists and nonartists, one day stand before our Maker, accountable for our choices. We may stand with differing degrees of accountability, but stand before Him we all will. Therefore, as a storyteller, I try to acknowledge, in all humility, that placing words and images into someone’s mind is an enormous responsibility that no faithful artist should take lightly.
With that in mind, I’ll attempt to explain (justify?) some of the graphic and violent depictions in my novels.
When I first set out to use fiction to present—or as I like to say, “celebrate”—the Book of Mormon, I don’t believe I possessed the necessary skills, either as a researcher, as an observer of the human condition, or as a wordsmith, for a subject as complex and multilayered as the final battle at Cumorah (or, for that matter, the final week in the life of Christ). I’m not sure I feel equal to the task even now, but I’m bold enough to try. I have no illusions that what I create will long stand as some sort of guide for how other artists should approach these subjects. More-talented storytellers will emerge whose efforts will undoubtedly dwarf my own. However, since I appear to be the first novelist to make a serious attempt to capture some trace of what it may have felt like to be present on that fateful day at Cumorah, I realize that any complications that may have delayed the completion of these novels might have been fate. (How’s that for an excuse?) Not only am I a more seasoned writer than I was ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, but the world in which we live and the audience to whom I write may be more prepared for what I have to say. In short, my later novels may now be more suitable to the times.
I finished the first book in the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series in 1989. It was a different world. For most earthlings, there was no internet. There were no cell phones. No Instagram or iPads or ISIS. The reason this novel, and its depictions, may be more relevant today than in 1989 is not merely because of what we are but because of what we aren’t. I can sum that up in a word. Actually, a name: George Robert Hollowell. George was my stepfather, but he did not like to be called George. Something about the nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie . . .” rubbed him wrong as a child, so George Robert Hollowell was strictly called Bob.
When Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites was first released, Bob Hollowell was still with us. My parents divorced when I was four years old. Bob entered my life the following year, 1968, when my mother remarried. Bob was a tough hombre, a hard and profane man, riddled with flaws (not unlike most human beings I’ve had the privilege to know). Our relationship, tempestuous at first, softened over time. I hated him, and I loved him, in that order. By the time I reached junior high and high school I probably spent more one-on-one time with Bob—fishing, skiing, and driving the dirt roads of northern Wyoming—than anyone else. He passed away in 1993.
Bob Hollowell was a U.S. Marine. I use that term the way he used it—in a way that demanded utmost respect, pride, and honor. Uniquely, he was a veteran of both World War II in the Pacific Theater and the Korean War. I believe I took more of an active interest in his war experiences than anybody else did during his lifetime. Bob joined the marines in 1942, when he was only fifteen years old, lying about his age, not unlike many other eager and patriotic Americans of his generation. He often told me that of the two hundred or so men who joined up with him and his unit, he was one of only two who survived to return home.
Bob was never promoted to any rank higher than Buck Sergeant (officially an E-4 in WWII). He was commonly known as a “grunt” soldier, assigned the worst possible tasks and the most dangerous frontline assignments. He saw his first action on Midway Island, where he was shot in the foot by a Japanese Zero. The bullet scar was visible every time he went barefoot. The bullet’s entry and exit were so clean that he recovered after only six weeks of healing. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, in November of 1943, Bob landed with the first wave of marines on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa. He also landed with the first wave on Iwo Jima, where Japanese resistance bogged down his platoon on the beachhead for (if I recall) three full days. He described in detail the implacable stubbornness of the Japanese and their entrenchment in caves, as well as the horror of having no other option but to burn them out of their places of hiding with flamethrowers. He’d seen countless men emerge from those caves engulfed in fire. Bob’s platoon was also among those who landed on the island of Okinawa, where initial resistance to the marines was light, but where, in weeks to come, he would experience the most desperate and ferocious fighting of WWII.
“Okinawa was the worst,” Bob told me on several occasions. “I lost more friends on Okinawa than anywhere else.”
Bob remained in the military after WWII came to a close, but four-and-a-half years later he was deployed to Korea, where he participated in MacArthur’s invasion at Inchon and his push to take the Korean Peninsula. The promise was that the war would be over by Christmas 1950, a promise embarrassingly unfulfilled. Bob was part of those American units later dubbed the “Chosin Frozen”—a term applied to iron-hardened GIs who fought a brutal weeks-long battle near Korea’s Chosin Reservoir. He described to me the night of Oct. 25, 1950, when he and his unit observed in awe and terror tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers crossing the Yalu River and entering Korean territory in a surprise attack.
“Most of them didn’t even have guns,” Bob told me. “Four out of five of them were just banging sticks together to make a racket.”
In conditions as cold as thirty-five degrees below zero, Bob and his marine unit were overrun. American forces abandoned much of their food and equipment to the starving and ill-equipped troops of Chairman Mao before regrouping and driving them back. Lastly, he was part of the “breakout” of U.S. troops who fought for every yard and mile to reach the port of Hungnam on Korea’s eastern coast. There he participated in the largest amphibious rescue in American military history.
At the conclusion of these desperate events, Bob was given the option to retire from active duty, which opportunity he admittedly embraced with great enthusiasm. After leaving Korea, he remained in the marines for a number of years, stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina, serving as a salty, loud-mouthed drill sergeant for fresh recruits, much like the ones stereotypically portrayed in war movies.
Only as I’ve gotten older have I come to appreciate the historical significance of the battles and locations where Bob was deployed. I never met anyone before or since who participated in more historically significant battles of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, it’s probable that among today’s Americans, only history buffs and living veterans will recognize these names and places anymore.
During the ’70s and ’80s, it was common for vets to feel reluctant about describing the events they endured. Bob often gave in to my relentless curiosity but did not relish being asked to recount these traumatic memories. It’s my observation that only those veterans who survived into the 1990s and beyond finally opened up and began to describe in more vivid detail what they endured. I believe this change in sentiment was born out of a sense of responsibility, that veterans recognized that many of the Americans of the newer generations had little understanding or appreciation of the sacrifices they made that allowed America to remain free.
Bob did not live to be part of this cultural shift of frankness and openness. A terrible regret of my life is that I never flipped on a tape recorder during our long conversations. Nor did I know enough about history or the context of the events he described to frame the best questions to elicit the most important details. As a result of this negligence, most of Bob Hollowell’s experiences and memories died with him.
Within the next decade, virtually all of our WWII and Korean veterans will pass into immortality. They will be gone forever. For this reason, I wonder if fate played a hand in preserving the release of my latest Tennis Shoes volumes until now. It gives me a small—though painfully inadequate—opportunity to express to a new generation some of the details of raw combat that I learned from my stepfather. Moreover, it allows me to describe the emotion and sentiment plainly visible in my stepfather’s eyes as he expressed his love of country and his pride as a U.S. Marine. That look is still bright in my memory, although I know if Bob were alive to read these words, he’d brush it all off with a roll of the eyes and declare it a “load of excrement” (like Brock, I’m forced to euphemize Bob’s typical phraseology).
During my lifetime, America hasn’t experienced anything similar to World War II. Yes, we’ve had wars wherein our troops persevered in the face of intense combat, but the very existence of America and our freedoms have never been as directly on the line. During my life, we’ve lost three wars, all because the will of the American people and our elected leaders wavered, often to the frustration of our soldiers in arms. The Nephites, as well as most other peoples and nations throughout history, did not have the luxury of losing a war and maintaining their prewar identity and lifestyle. To many Americans of my generation, the concept of fighting for one’s existence on their very own doorstep or watching their nation overrun by foreign forces is incomprehensible. More incomprehensible is the idea of fighting a war of extermination in which nothing is spared, in which the life of every man, woman, and child is on the line. Honestly, it’s doubtful that even the Nephites fully comprehended what was happening until destruction was upon them.
Today, many of us have forgotten that warfare—much like plagues, earthquakes, and famines—has been used by God to mete out His justice and/or pave the way for the prosperity of His covenant people. Modern pundits harshly judge the theology of the Old Testament, citing instances when the Lord or His prophet instructed the Israelites to wipe out entire cities and peoples, leaving nothing alive, not even women, children, or livestock (see Numbers 21; Deuteronomy 7:1–2, 20:10–18; Joshua 6:21). These instances are used to dismiss the Bible as laughable, dated, and barbaric while lauding the superiority of modern-day values of civility and compassion.
If we use only temporal or secular barometers to judge the ways of God and His universe, we will always be limited to a narrow view of reality. We might as well question every other moral paradox of mortality—death, suffering, disaster, undeserved riches, unpunished crimes, unrequited love, and every other perceived injustice and inequity. Indeed, many do question these seeming contradictions of a loving God, and therefore question His existence. Those who choose to see life only through a temporal lens cannot embrace the eternal perspective of God. Holy writ reminds us to see as the Lord seeth (1 Samuel 16:7) and “lean not unto [our] own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). Despite this, the temptation to judge God’s standards of morality based on our worldly predilections can be irrepressible.
My generation, as well as other Americans who have experienced the last fifty years of unprecedented peace, would likely find themselves confounded and unprepared—psychologically, physically, and spiritually—to face the same realities of prior generations. For this reason, I’ve justified presenting some of the more violent descriptions in my novels, because I don’t believe our current situation can be perpetually preserved. This justification is faulty due to my imperfect understanding, but it’s what I have to offer.
One purpose, or object, of storytelling (or of the storyteller) is to help a reader grasp, albeit vicariously, the significance of things they might not otherwise grasp. I’m fully aware that any hope that my meager novels, or even the art of storytelling, can bestow upon readers that missing wisdom and preparation is foolish and naive, but at least it’s something. If nothing else, God willing, my stories can help revitalize readers’ faith and encourage them to draw closer to the gospel I strive to celebrate in my novels. If so, I’ll feel I played some small part in preparing the world for its future challenges.
I hope those who have an opportunity to speak to the last of our WWII veterans will seize that opportunity before it’s too late. Otherwise, I urge readers to view the wonderful documentaries available on the American Heroes Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, and other venues.
Finally, it’s worthwhile to ask readers to ponder the question: Why does such a large percentage of the Book of Mormon—almost one-third of its contents—focus upon warfare? This volume repeatedly emphasizes that it was written for the people of our day and time (Moroni 1:4; 8:26–41). So why so much discussion of war?
I hope this question will be addressed more specifically in a future chapter note.
Chapter 7
Hamira
I am Hamira, daughter of Akish and Asherah. By the lineage of my forefathers, I am a princess, but I do not think much of the significance of that. Although my great-grandfather is a righteous man, and although his genealogy reaches back to the Great Patriarch King Jared and to his father, Moriancumr, who crossed the great deep when Father God confounded the languages of the children of men, I am a witness of much tyranny and bloodshed. My father is a necromancer and rogue of the darkest cast, and my mother, I have come to realize, is a murderer of equal distinction.
My brother, Nimrah, is cut from the same vile cloth as my father. He hunts me now in the streets of this strange land peopled by a race whose ways I know not. Nimrah holds captive the family members of a young man whom I . . . whom I . . . whom I fear very much owns my heart.
This young man surely wonders if my soul mirrors the same black cast as my parents. My objective was to prove to him otherwise. I would rescue his aunt and infant cousin of my own accord. Then he would know. They would all know—Joshua, his cousin Melody, and his mother, Jenny. They would know that even if I did, in fact, wield some of my father’s powers, I wielded them for good. Not as a corrupter but as a diviner. Not in a way that forced me to surrender my mind or agency but in a way that bent such powers to my will. To heaven’s will. I do not even like that word—power—because it conjures images of sorcery. Instead I would call it capacity. I would call it faculty, because no one could deny the virtue of heaven’s will.
So I fled from him, fled from Joshua’s presence, as well as the presence of his mother and cousin, to prove that I could sway this “capacity” for good. I would show them I could apply that same faculty that consumed my father and brother in a way that would please even the Father God. I would use my father’s “Finder”—the Oracle of Cohor—to find Joshua’s aunt and infant cousin. Joshua himself possessed a similar oracle. Typical of his gender’s vanity, Joshua believed his oracle was a device hallowed and sanctified by the Father God while mine was merely a device of the Great Satan. It was a foolish distinction, and I was determined to disprove it before the setting of the sun, before the commencement of the pre-seder.
The pre-seder was a special meal celebrated by many denizens, especially Galileans and pilgrims from faraway districts. I learned that it was not as formal as the Passover meal, or seder, with its prescribed entrees of sacrificed meats, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, etc. The pre-seder was more of a social evening of pious reflection and hymns. This year it was apparently more sacred than usual because the formal Passover fell on the same night that began the Jewish Sabbath.
I hurried from the village named Bet-Ani toward the confines of the walled city of Jerusalem. Under my arm I carried a bundle of weapons—Joshua’s weapons—instruments he did not need here. Instruments that, if worn in public, among these people, might have prompted his arrest. Or worse. I also carried at my waist Joshua’s oracle, the Liahona.
I paused once and knelt in the shadow of a very old and gnarled tree. Olive tree, or so I’d been told. It was Jenny’s opinion that this grove of about two dozen trees had borne fruit since the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom I presumed were important prophets in a more ancient era. Carefully, I removed the Liahona from its leather satchel. My finger glided once along its glittering surface. I peered into the delicate mesh at the top but perceived nothing. The oracle’s heart was beclouded and inscrutable. I inhaled and set my knees more firmly in the soil. Gripping the instrument in both hands, my eyelids fell shut in solemnity. As with the Oracle of Cohor, I formed a singular question in my thoughts: Where are Joshua’s aunt and infant cousin? Where are Sabrina and Gid?
I waited. Waited. Waited longer. A raven screeched, and I cast my eyes about in search of prying eyes. The raven squawked again, farther away, its “caw” overtaken by the tweets and twitters of milder birds.
Sighing, I looked again into the Liahona’s heart. Still nothing. So it was not the same as the Oracle of Cohor. Joshua’s instrument of divination was not as powerful. Not as rudimentary. Or it operated upon some magic whose connivances only Joshua knew, which struck me as evidence that if any instrument represented the powers of darkness or evil, it was Joshua’s “Director” and not my “Finder.”
