The Amulek Alternative: Exercising Agency in a World of Choice By Anne Osborn Poelman Deseret Book (Salt Lake City), 1997. Hardcover: 132 pages. ISBN: 1-57345-322-6 Suggested retail price: $15.95 (US)
Reviewed by: R. W. Rasband

The Amulek Alternative is not a thriller by Robert Ludlum but the new book by Anne Osborn Poelman, the prominent University of Utah professor of medicine and spouse of Elder Ronald Poelman of the Seventy. It is concerned with the issues of free agency, responsibility, and good and evil. The title comes from the Book of Mormon missionary Amulek, companion to Alma, who "knew, but would not know": he eventually left a successful worldly career to follow Alma into a Christ-centered life.

Poelman tells several vivid stories to illustrate gospel principles. She is paticularly candid in recounting the experiences of her stepdaughter, Laurel Poelman (to whom the book is dedicated), who suffered an ordeal at the hands of a dentist husband who became a drug user and dealer. Laurel's experience movingly shows the risks and rewards of exercising agency in a dangerous world.

Two criticisms: at 132 pages, this book seems rather slight. Jerry Johnston, in a useful review of this book in the "Deseret News" [22 Nov 1997] distinguishes between two types of LDS devotional literature: "Lighthouse" books, which explicate a great deal of doctrine, like those by James E. Talmage and LeGrand Richards; and "Lantern" books, which deal with everyday problems of Christian living -- books which light the path immediately before us. Poelman's book is one of these, as are those by Chieko Okazaki, Ardeth Kapp, and others. Perhaps its just my overanalytical male mind, but as a reader I prefer a synthesis of Lighthouse and Lantern. My hero in this regard remains Eugene England, who manages to combine expansive theological vision with great empathy for nitty-gritty human realities.

A second criticism involves Poelman's extensive use (or misuse) of conservative writers to buttress her criticism of modern society. She forthrightly identifies her personal views as "conservative" in her preface and cites in her book George Will, John Leo, James Q. Wilson, John Updike, and Andrew Delbanco's fine book, "The Death of Satan." Well, I like those guys, too. They are first-rate influences for good in the larger American culture. But the problem with using them in an LDS context is that there is already a strong impulse towards conformity in our Mormon subculture. Thus Brigham Young University president Merrill Bateman can quote neoconservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb in an address, and an atmosphere is created at BYU where the Rodin exhibit can be censored (an action which I seriously doubt Himmelfarb, Will et al would approve.)

So The Amulek Alternative gets a reluctantly mixed review from me: appreciation for what is there: regret that there isn't more.

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               R.W. Rasband                    hsu481@freenet.mb.ca
               Heber City, UT       rrasband@mail.coin.missouri.edu
                       Lisa Kennedy Montgomery forever!
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