Into the Field By Benson Y. Parkinson Aspen Books, 2000. Softcover: 226 pages. ISBN: 1-56236-245-3 Suggested retail price: $12.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Rex Goode

When Richard Dutcher's, God's Army, first came to Portland, Oregon, I asked my daughter who was home from BYU for the summer if she had seen it.

She replied that she had, then brashly commented, "But it doesn't accurately show what being on a mission is like."

I smiled and asked, "How would you know?"

Such was my fear upon having the opportunity to review Benson Parkinson's Into the Field. I wasn't certain whose decision that was, but figured it was not someone who knows me. Somehow, I figured that a major task in reviewing a novel about life on a mission should include a value judgment as to believability. I haven't served a fulltime mission, so how indeed would I know if the story was an accurate portrayal?

My second fear was that I had not read the book to which Into the Field is a sequel, The MTC: Set Apart. I pondered my added inadequacy in doing a review because I couldn't judge the sequel's flow from its parent. I hoped that there would be at least enough development of characters that most readers got to know in The MTC: Set Apart so that I wouldn't have to suffer through shortcuts in characterization.

My third fear was in being asked to review the work of someone I had come to regard as a friend and mentor. Could I give a thumb's down if I believed it deserved it?

One area that Ben Parkinson and I have frequently discussed, as it relates to literary criticism, is the idea of the identity of the reviewer. It is fair game to review a work based on who I am, as the reviewer, and how the work resounds in my consciousness. It is really irrelevant whether I am externally qualified to judge the content as believable, consistent, or worthy, as long as I tie it in with who I am. In other words, a review of a novel about missionary life is as valid by someone who didn't serve a mission as by someone who did.

My identity is that of a man who consciously chose to not serve a fulltime mission. The reasons are not important to my review, so I will forbear to tell them. In a culture where the mission a man served in is an important badge of honor, a man like me has no satisfying answer to the question, "So, where did you serve your mission?" I think that men who served missions don't really notice how often the question is asked.

You can get to the point where you are not only sick of the question, but are also longsuffering of the endless stories that ensue if you happen to be around men who can answer the question satisfactorily.

It was with this distaste that I picked up Into the Field and began to read, hoping it wouldn't turn out to be like those socials I hate, where the men stand around and tell tall tales about their missions and their wives tell war stories about the delivery room, complete with near-death experiences bringing precious spirits from beyond the veil.

I digested the prologue a few times, to make sure I had the characters straight, and then plunged pleasantly into the rest. The picture I had of the story grew rapidly dark. Where I expected enthusiastic missionaries going about their labors and gaining converts with relative ease were some intensely apathetic creatures and absolutely no converts. My mission-life cynic was really liking this. Still, it seemed a little too bleak to me, which is where the believability issue started to come in. I mean, if you were to believe the pep talks about missions being the best two years of a young man's life, you would expect that these kinds of slackers would be the exception rather than the rule.

I also pondered that even if a mission like this were a possibility, it would take great audacity to write a story about it, given the cultural climate that ties everything up in such sweetly alluring packages.

I entered the second chapter wondering when I'd get back to Elder Wilburg. Not any time soon, I discovered. I kept reading.

By the time I reached the Burns Conference section, where a general authority comes and lays the mission out with a roundhouse to the head, I was cheering for the man. These missionaries needed their rumps kicked and Elder Burns was just the man to do it. Despite my unorthodoxy, I'm a rule-follower, often to the letter, and when someone shows disregard for the rules, even for rules I don't agree with, I like to see him get his attitude squarely adjusted.

With everyone adequately chastised, I was certain the story would take a miraculous turn, and the missionaries would rout Satan and convert the whole mission. Instead, I saw seemingly fruitless work progress. Part of me wanted to jump to the end and read the triumphant ending just, to happy me up. It was upon this consideration that I noticed something about myself, something that the story helped me see.

Here are these missionaries, fighting discouragement, doing the mundane things they were expected to do. They didn't start out that way. They started out lazy and over-expectant. When they finally start doing things right, the expected rewards don't follow. Baptisms, baptisms, baptisms? Where were the baptisms? Without being visibly rewarded, they keep going. Wasn't that a perfect summation of my life? Here and there, I saw in the story the subtle growths in spirituality, the personal, but hidden rewards of faithfulness. They weren't there to get baptisms. They were there to learn to do things right, to keep going when the carrot wasn't out in front where it belonged.

Whether this story is a believable portrayal of missionary life, it resounds inside this soul as an aerial view on an important truth. Anyone who goes month after month, year after year, and decade after decade doing things right, but never realizing their expected reward, must do so from an inner strength and spirituality that is not reward-oriented.

I can't tell you if Into the Field portrays the missionary life accurately. I can't verify that it is true and consistent with The MTC: Set Apart. I can breathe a sigh of relief by giving it a hearty recommendation. Well done, Benson, and thanks.