All Is Swell: Trust in Thelmas Way By Robert F. Smith Deseret Book, 1999. Hardcover: 291 pages. ISBN: 1-57345-466-4 Suggested retail price: $15.95 (US) Audience: LDS audience
Reviewed by: Barbara R. Hume

Robert Smiths book titles seem to mean one thing the first time you read them, and something else after you get into the book. Trust is the name of a young man who serves a mission in a town called Thelmas Way. Now, does the title seem different? Trusts mission experiences are funny, moving, unique, sometimes slapstick, and always entertaining. The story certainly gave me a new admiration for the young people who serve missionsand have to spend all that time dealing with human nature.

As you might expect, the most trying human nature he has to deal with comes in the form of missionary companions. (You may recognize some of your own former companions in the elders with whom Trust serves.) He also has what we Mormons euphemistically refer to as "growing experiences" in dealing with the people of Thelmas Way, whose way of life and thought processes are completely alien to him. Indeed, Trust does grow considerably during the course of the novel, which begins with his mission call (" . . . while I had sort of imagined myself looking sharp in France or stunning in Greece, I guess He sort of saw me in Tennessee") and ends with the decision he must make after he returns home to what our culture calls "civilization."

In one way, this book reminds me of the books of Terry Pratchett, who writes hilarious parodies of traditional fantasy novels. The resemblance comes in the way I follow people around with the book in my hand, saying, "Listen to this! This part is really funny!" Smith has a way of popping up with an absurdly humorous comment in the middle of what might have been a bland scene from another writer. For example, in describing a persons smile, he says,. "Her smile was like a comet. It only appeared once every hundred years, and even then it was kind of hard to make it out." A companion whistles through his nose when he breathes, and Trust is tempted to "pinch the thing shut." Trust spaces out on the stand during a meeting and realizes people are waiting for him to speak (something I've always feared would happen to me). Hes been thinking about the rivalry between the bench sitters at the front of the chapel and the chair sitters at the back, each group considering itself spiritually superior to the other. "Most of the bench sitters . . . piously considered themselves worthy of sitting so close to the podium because of their clear consciences, claiming that the chair sitters parked their behinds on the fringes due to some sort of subconscious unworthiness." (Maybe Ill mark this scene and pass it around in sacrament meeting. Yes, Im one of the chair-sitters.)

Trust leaves his beautiful-but-selfish girlfriend, who nobody expects to wait for him, and lands in Thelmas Way, Tennessee. Everyone in town is a nominal Mormon, because Parley P. Pratt once stopped there, got sick from eating bad ham, and left them a first edition of the Book of Mormon. The existence of this book gives the towns inhabitants great pride. A large percentage of the population is, however, what we now call "less active." Trust vows to bring them all into the fold, but they prove to be a challenging bunch. The first man he meets is wearing blue paint and feathers. Another has a vision to the effect that "A nickel can appear to be a dime." One woman empties the innards out of the day planner she is given and stores fishing worms and soil in the zippered case. A man who wishes to disappear allows the town to believe hes been translated. And everyone who is anyone is involved in planning the sesquicentennial pageant for Thelmas Way, a project two years in the making. The preparations for this pageant become a unifying plot device for the book; as the plot moves toward the actual staging of the pageant, Trust moves toward becoming a more mature and generous human being.

Although the book uses a broadly humorous approach, it isnt simply fluff. As the characters learn, we learn as well. It seems to be a constant in human nature to be judgmental of those not like ourselves, and most of us have to learn over and over to look at people with a more Christ-like view. The experiences of these characters can help. I particularly enjoyed the fact that many characters are dynamicthey change and grow in realistic ways.

I found the book, like another Smith novel I read, to be skillfully written. Smith handles dialog well, his characters are consistent, and his humorous asides make reading it a pleasure. Im accustomed to reading humorous Mormon novels written by women; I was pleased to see one from a male perspective. I keep watching the genre of LDS fiction for breakout talent, and I think Smith has a great deal to offer those who enjoy a good story with recognizeable LDS charactersthe good, the bad, and the ugly. Only the most prickly among us could be offended by the amiable humor, and goodness knows theres plenty about the Mormon culture to poke fun at.

The book is billed as the first in the Trust Williams Trilogy. I look forward to the next in the series.

barbara hume