Dallas Robbins

The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine by Gary Topping: City Weekly

The history of a cathedral is not just about another nice building, but also about the struggles, triumphs, and personal histories of a people. Gary Topping, professor of history at SLCC and archivist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Utah, chronicles in his new book The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, the first 100 years of that magnificent building and the stories and voices of Utah Catholics.

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams: City Weekly

Living in Utah, you’ve heard it before: old creepy guy marries prepubescent virgin on polygamous compound. When explored in fiction, such stories can be as over-baked as last Sunday’s casserole. But Carol Lynch Williams does the improbable in her latest novel The Chosen One. She takes a far-too-common headline and creates a brave, uncommon voice in the character of 13-year-old Kyra.

Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender

Tackling the looming political conundrum of illegal immigration would be a challenge for any novelist, let alone a young adult novelist. But Julia Alvarez spins a brave tale in Return to Sender, putting a face on the fears and challenges of illegal workers in America with personal aplomb.

After being injured in a tractor accident, Tyler’s father hires a migrant family to help keep their Vermont farm going. Tyler can’t help but look on this family with fear—especially Mari, the oldest daughter among three, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but is slowly becoming connected to American culture.

George D. Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy

With an endless stream of books on polygamy and its discontents, do we really need another one? If the answer includes mention of Nauvoo Polygamy: "… but we called it celestial marriage" by George Smith, it would be a definitive yes. Ten years in the making, Nauvoo Polygamy traces the origins and establishment of Joseph Smith's vision of "spiritual wives" before it ever stepped foot in the State of Deseret. The book should dispel forever the common misperception that Joseph pined after only one wife and that polygamy was Brigham's idea while crossing the plains.

David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife

David Ebershoff’s moving and humorous story The 19th Wife explores the unlikely lives of two remarkable characters: Jordan Scott, a 21st-century “lost boy” and hardscrabble gay man, who travels from Los Angeles back to the site of his polygamous upbringing to help absolve his mother of the murder of his father; and Ann Eliza Winters, the novel’s namesake, who divorced Brigham Young and lectured against polygamy across 19th-century America.

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

The first sentence of the book Massacre at Mountain Meadows sums it up perfectly.

"On September 11, 1857, Mormon settlers in southern Utah used a false flag of truce to lull a group of California-bound emigrants from their circled wagons and then slaughtered them.  When the killing was over, more than one hundred butchered bodies lay strewn across a half-mile stretch of an upland meadow.  Most of the victims were women and children."

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach

“They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.”

The opening hook to Ian McEwan’s latest novel On Chesil Beach is a delicious invitation into a world that time forgot. McEwan, the celebrated, literary Limey, whose previous works include such novels as Saturday, Atonement, and Enduring Love, has now focused his attention on two characters with such a rich and complex history, taking the reader back to a time and place that we sometimes wonder existed at all.

The Mormon Church on Trial

After Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race, many people gave a sigh of relief that we would not have to possibly endure years of Mormon jokes delivered on late night television. But a century earlier, Reed Smoot—an LDS Apostle who was elected to the U.S. Senate—caused an even greater media controversy.

Apostate Secrets: The William E. McLellin Papers

Before the infamous forger and murderer Mark Hofmann became a household name, he was double-dealing a nonexistent “McLellin collection” to several buyers, claiming it would change Mormon history forever. On Oct. 15, 1985, he was to deliver what he promised was “two apple crates full” of these documents to Salt Lake City businessman Steven Christensen. But instead, on that chilly morning, he delivered pipe bombs, killing Christensen and Kathy Sheets, two innocent believers caught in Hofmann’s psychopathic crossfire.

Paul Toscano's The Sacrament of Doubt

In August of 1993, I stood in a conference room of a local Salt Lake City hotel listening to a passionate and angry speech by a local bankruptcy lawyer and family man—Paul James Toscano—criticizing the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for an idolatrous overemphasis on Heavenly Father at the expense of the grace of Jesus Christ. Toscano said such an imbalance leads to an abuse of power in the LDS hierarchy, a false conception of salvation and a misguided view of sexuality. In anticipation for the inevitable backlash, he declared, “We must not fear excommunication.” I thought to myself, “This man is packing some serious chutzpah.”
Just one month later, Toscano was sitting in his own “court of love” for that speech he gave, facing 15 of his local priesthood leaders. And by late afternoon on Sept. 19, he was excommunicated for apostasy.