Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Thriller
Approximate word count: 145-150,000 words
Availability
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on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
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Author:
A “numbers
guy” who works in the world of credit and finance, Joseph M. Rinaldo has always
been an avid reader and loves how words can be used to create different worlds.
He has two additional novels available, Hazardous
Choices and A Spy at Home. For
more, visit Rinaldo’s website.
Description:
“This
modern-day novel is based on the actual massacre of innocent Americans by
Mormon zealots in the Utah Territory. In present-day Nashville, Tennessee,
Jeremiah grows up with a prejudice against the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints for the murders in 1857 of his ancestors at Mountain Meadows.
Until the 1995 Oklahoma City attack, this was the most deadly act of terrorism
against US citizens.
Jeremiah’s
hatred multiplies when his father, Luke, informs him that his mother suffered
abuse at the hands of her Mormon husband in a previous marriage. Due to his
father’s association with the Mormon Victim’s Action Committee, Jeremiah gets
an opportunity to expose the current widespread and Church-accepted practice of
abusing women. With his father’s encouragement and the knowledge of his
mother’s horrific experience, Jeremiah accepts M-VAC’s offer to train and
insert him into an LDS community in hopes of collecting evidence to prosecute
the abusers.
Jeremiah’s
objective broadens when he sees all the atrocities committed by Mormon zealots.
Now he wants to expose the entire Church as a violent and dangerous fraud.”
Appraisal:
I liked the
overall, high-level premise of A Mormon
Massacre. I’ll summarize that as someone in the present day who had
ancestors murdered by a group of Mormons in the Mountain Meadows Massacre (which
was a very real event). This character has a hatred of Mormons, passed down
through the generations, that is strong enough to view the organization and its
members as evil, and to be motivated enough that, given the chance, he would go
to great lengths to uncover and expose that evil.
However,
once we got into the details, I found I had big issues. Someone with little or
no exposure to the Mormon Church might not have had these issues. I found that,
rather than being drawn into the story and suspending disbelief, I kept
spotting problems with terminology or something stated as a fact or belief of
the Mormon Church that missed the mark by so much as to be unbelievable. I’ll
get to some specifics later, but will first try to give a generic example that
should be understandable to most people, to illustrate my concern.
Imagine a
thriller, set in contemporary times, where a large, nationwide bank is being
embezzled for millions of dollars. I, and I suspect most thriller readers,
would have no problem believing that the embezzlement was being done by a small
group of high-level managers conspiring with a few key people. Even if we had
doubts that the scenario as presented could happen in real life, if there
weren’t big holes, we’d be able suspend disbelief while reading.
Now imagine
that the behavior of those who worked at the bank and weren’t part of the
conspiracy is also changed. Terminology is wrong, maybe calling those who
service customers coin tossers instead
of tellers or calling the piece of
paper used as a means of transferring funds a bonanza slip instead of a check.
Imagine these coin tossers give
customers exchanging bonanza slips
for cash random bonuses or a bonanza slip
for a different amount. Or if the customer prefers, they can use the self
service line and help themselves to however much cash they want. You’d think
you’d entered The Twilight Zone.
This is how
I felt reading A Mormon Massacre. In
order to get the reader to suspend disbelief when the story takes place in a
milieu that is real, it is important to get the details as close to real as
possible except for those things that need to be different for your story, and
even those need to be somewhat plausible. The number of items that jumped out
at me that failed to do this would be too long to list, but I’ll give you a
small sample.
A set of
two missionaries who work together (called “companions”) would never be a man
and a woman unless they were an older couple who were married to each other.
Missionary isn’t a semi-permanent position that is transferred from area to area, as depicted,
but a temporary assignment, mostly spent in a single geographical area. While
some older missionaries may serve more than one term, it virtually never
happens with younger missionaries like those in this story. Members of “The
Council of Twelve Apostles” (an actual part of the Mormon hierarchy) are
referred to as apostles, not councilmen. While I’m not so naïve as to expect
that every Mormon follows every one of their commandments or teachings, you
would never have a large church related gathering serve coffee, as was done at
least once in this book. Nor would you have a member of the church hierarchy
drink alcohol in public, especially not in Utah, if for no other reason than
the risk of being seen doing so by
another church member. I could list many more items like this.
Many of my
complaints would not be valid if what was being depicted was a fictional church.
However, that would also make the overall premise invalid. For someone who has
never known a Mormon and knows absolutely nothing about them, this story might
hold up. For anyone with a smidgeon of knowledge, buying into this will be a
struggle.
FYI:
Adult
language and situations.
Format/Typo Issues:
A moderate
number of proofing and copy-editing misses.
Rating: ** Two stars
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