LDS Family Encyclopedia

Fed Ex delivered a big box on the doorstep today. It was full of books — contributor copies of The Latter-day Saint Family Encyclopedia, published this month by Thunder Bay Press. I'm listed as coauthor — together with Chris Bigelow, a longtime friend from the Mormon literary community who also coincidentally happens to be the publisher of No Going Back. Or not so coincidentally, as it turns out…

First, I should make it clear that my work on the LDS Family Encyclopedia was in no way a quid pro quo for publication of No Going Back. They were separate ventures. However, I confess that when Chris came to me asking if I would help him out with this project — something he'd planned to do by himself originally, before discovering just how much writing was involved in it — one of the thoughts in the back of my brain was that if Chris was tearing his hair out over this, it might be harder to get his attention to help market No Going Back. Besides, it sounded kind of fun. Or insane. One of the two. Or maybe both.

The book certainly turned out to be the latter. Way too many hours for way too little pay, in way too short a timeframe. I also would have been happier if we'd had more of a chance to get the book vetted by content experts, though we did what we could.

But it was fun, too, when I wasn't going crazy (and sometimes even when I was). About a half-year ago when we were close to the end of the writing, I wrote the following in a letter to family and friends:

It's a kind of work I work I like doing. Explaining the interest of hobbits in genealogies and lineage books, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote: "Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions." I find a similar pleasure in writing tasks of this sort, setting forth familiar information in a comfortable straightforward way. There's an elegant, clean persuasiveness to facts and ideas laid out plainly and clearly. I hope that's what my work for this project has accomplished — along with adding interesting lesser-known tidbits of information every now and then.

Writing short informational articles is a bit like eating popcorn. (Bear with me here.) You do one, and then another, and another . . . Each just seems to whet the appetite for more.

And that was true. But it was still a headache. Given the constraints we were working under, I debated for a while whether I wanted to be listed as a coauthor. (Another contributor chose not to be, though more I believe due to possible eyebrows being raised by an employer.) But then I decided the publicity might be valuable in bringing more work of this type. And I didn't really have much of a reputation as a Mormon scholar anyway. I'm sure there are some inaccuracies, but we did the best we could.

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So should you buy The Latter-day Saint Family Encyclopedia? Hm…

Asked to describe the market niche for this book, Chris was reported as saying (in a BYU Daily Universe article for which I was also interviewed), "Other reference books were either more academic or less thorough. This book is something accessible and thorough." My comment from the same article: "It is written to provide clear, accurate and non-controversial information appropriate for non-members and members." Which is, I think, true enough.

I think we did a fairly decent job, all things considered. The $35 list price (only $26.56 from Amazon.com) seems vaguely appalling to me, but I suppose it's not unreasonable for a 400-page coffee-table-size hardback with multiple illustrations. Goodness knows Chris and I aren't being paid royalties, so buying a copy doesn't put money in my bank account (though there's technically a bonus if the book goes to some unlikely amount of copies in a second printing).

So buy it if you want. Or not. I can't really say that your life will be poorer if you never own this book. I think we did a good job of dealing with some challenging topics in a clear, informative, straightforward manner. The book lacks the scholarship of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (published in 1992 and now freely available online), but that wasn't really its purpose. It's not a child of my heart like No Going Back — more like a teenage foster child who stayed in our house for a year or so before turning 18 and striking out on his own — but can't help feel a mild sense of interest in its welfare and investment in its success. I wish it well.