"A Beautiful Museum Piece; A Literary Golem"

At the risk of offending some of the authors whose books I've reviewed in the past few months, I felt upon beginning Falling Toward Heaven that I was at last in the hands of a master wordsmith, an LDS author who had a remarkable command of the English language, which he wields with the apparent effortlessness of an Olympic figure skater gracing the surface of the ice. I have read a number of LDS books whose stories were compelling, riveting, haunting, engrossing, but whose devil-in-the-detail word phrasing bothered me many times. Bennion's mastery of words was a refreshing and welcome change for me. I only found one phrase in the entire book that I wanted to rewrite, and I honestly couldn't tell you what it was now. I wouldn't anyway -- why dwell on a tiny defect in the midst of greatness?

Falling Toward Heaven is the story of Elder Howard Rockwood, LDS missionary assigned to Houston, Texas. But this isn't a missionary story -- he is near the end of his mission, and it won't be long before he's heading home to rural Utah, to his pseudo-apostate mother with imaginative interpretations of the Gospel, and to Belinda, the girl who's waited for him for two years. During this period of trunkiness, at a Fourth of July celebration, he and his straightlaced companion Elder Peterson spot attractive Allison Warren approaching, in Howard's own words, "as if in answer to prayer," taking up an empty spot on the grass next to them in preparation for watching fireworks. With her is her hyper-academic lover Eliot, cheese-and-wine basket in hand, beard on face, and nearly twice her age. They strike up a conversation, and Elder Peterson attempts a Gospel contact as Howard quietly lusts after Allison.

From this beginning, Howard obsesses over Allison as he comes up with more and more excuses to meet her. As his final mission day arrives and he's on his way to the airport, he finally gives in to his obsession, heads for Allison's home, and "falls" in the one way every missionary, mission president, and mother of a missionary dreads.

Thus begins a bizarre love relationship that takes the couple from Houston to desolate Rockwood, Utah, to Anchorage, Alaska. Along the way, Howard breaks the heart of his faithful fiancee Belinda, his mother and father, who easily figure out he's lost his virginity, and the whole congregation of Rockwood. But he is a man who cannot escape his love for Allison, and he is determined to marry her. He also cannot escape Rockwood, where his family roots plunge deep, where the family farm of generations is haunted by the ghosts of polygamous patriarchs of the past.

But she won't marry, and she refuses to endure the utterly alien culture of rural Mormonism in the inhospitable desert surrounding Rockwood. She lures him to Anchorage, where she has a job offer, and they continue to struggle making their impossible relationship work.

Falling is a fascinating character study of the ultimate odd couple, who make Felix and Oscar look like Brother and Sister David O. McKay. Howard is a man trapped by his past and by his religion that he has violated but still clings to with tenacity. Allison is the most masterful evocation I have ever seen of a nonmember who cannot make sense of the Mormon experience, and through her perspective immerses us in the alienness of our own culture. For the first time I truly understood how "peculiar" we look to people.

Besides that one trivial awkward phrase, Falling Toward Heaven is a masterwork of literature, and it's gratifying to know that it's LDS literature, proving that LDS literature can measure up to the literature of the world.

Except for one glaring defect.

The relationship between Howard and Allison makes absolutely no sense. These people should not be together. They know they should not be together. They irritate the bejeebies out of each other. There is literally nothing to base their relationship on. Even the physical attraction they feel for one another wouldn't hold up over time against the pressure of their utter incompatibility. They are in love simply because the author says so, and there is no other justification for their relationship.

While I enjoyed reading Bennion's book immensely, it never moved me at a deep, emotional level. It's a marvelous piece of workmanship, but bereft of a foundation to reach the heart. Falling Toward Heaven is a glittering museum piece, carefully preserved within its glass casing. The reader observes it, studies it, admires it, receives intellectual illumination from it, then moves on to the next display, having felt little emotional effect from it. Falling Toward Heaven is a magnificently fashioned literary golem, devoid of soul, with nothing more than the magical force of the author's will to animate it.

 --  
D. Michael Martindale
dmichael@wwno.com