The Zarahemla Vision is the second novel in a series of Salt Lake City-based novels featuring Gabe Utley, a private investigator. Born and raised Mormon, he has since departed from the faith, but continues to live in Salt Lake City, chasing bad guys and solving mysteries.

His cast of characters includes a friend inside the Church hierarchy, at least one Native American, lots of odd-ball Mormons of all stripes, and a wildly-improbable plot. If this all sounds familiar, it's because the formula is identical to Robert Irvine's efforts. (I haven't checked to see which author released the earliest first novel.)

The Zarahemla Vision opens with Gabe being summoned by an aunt who claims that their crazy relative Parley has kidnapped the President of the Church. Gabe dismisses it as wild speculation, but when the President suddenly "dies" and is buried in a closed-casket funeral (no viewing), he becomes suspicious. He teams up with his erstwhile lover/competitor Mona (a reporter for the Deseret News) to discover the truth.

Central to all this is a file containing the so-called "Zarahemla Vision." Everyone seems to want to get their hands on this file, but it disappears in a frenzy of confusion and murder. In the meantime, the Church organization is taken over by evil business interests and their cowardly followers. Gabe, however, won't give up.

The book is filled with loony characters, and not a single normal Latter-day Saint. The Church is portrayed as directionless, wrongly-motivated and evily inclined.

Some years ago I coined a phrase "distractive fiction." (I think it's original to me -- if it isn't, I apologize and earnestly solicit correction.) It describes a type of writing that presents a veneer of historical authenticity, but in fact so thoroughly distorts the history to a point where the reader, confronted with an entirely unbelievable story line, ceases to wonder whether the underlying "facts" are indeed facts.

The Zarahemla Vision is just such a work. An example will illustrate:

Fundamental to the plot is the passion of the current President of the Church to bring the gospel to the Lamanties. Given the world mission of the Church, this really, so far as I understand, has not been a central focus of the Church for many years. The uninformed reader will hardly question the authenticity of the presentation of the mission. The way in which it is pursued is so ludicrous that it "distracts" from even a casual exploration of the underlying "factual" basis for the story.

The author, who grew up in Salt Lake City, and who, according to the jacket " . . . grew up assuming that most of the civilized world was Mormon," nonetheless displays some interesting views of both the Book of Mormon and the city of Salt Lake. Throughout the book, Lemuel is spelled "Lemual," something that should have been caught in editing. I've walked, and driven, both 13th East and South Temple, referred to in the book as "13 East Street" and "South Temple Street." I'm not certain what the official street names are, but I'm very certain I've never heard the word "Street" appended to the street names.

Most serious is the author's attitude toward the subject of racism in the Church. An organization called the Indian Placement Mission is portrayed at one as a benevolent association to bring the Gospel to the Native Americans, and then as an extension of an arrogant, racist ecclesiastical organization that has no purpose but to subdue, and ultimately to transform the "red savages" into a people "pure and delightsome." I found this picture to be both distasteful and distracting to the real mission of the Church.

Had the book not been placed in the Mormon setting, the story line might have been amusing and interesting. In fact, Stewart is a pretty good writer. He keeps the action moving; he keeps you guessing as one character after another turns out not to be who you thought he was.

But there is a real danger that casual readers will think that the author is trying to buttress a wild, improbable plot with an authentic setting. The setting is anything but authentic.

"Distractive fiction" worries me. The Zarahemla Vision is every bit as inaccurate as anything I've ever read in the field of Mormon-oriented fiction. Clearly Stewart had a lot of fun writing this book, but I fear for the negative impact such literature may have on the Church.

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Jeff Needle
jeff.needle@general.com