Posted by:
SL Cabbie
(
)
Date: March 05, 2014 03:06PM
There's also one in the "Kingdom of the West" series; I saw a reasonably priced hardbound copy last week, but I'm not telling anyone where it is...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/scoundrels-tale-will-bagley/1102449334?ean=9780874212730http://www.amazon.com/Scoundrels-Tale-Samuel-Brannnan-Kingdom/dp/0870622870Mormons will tout this one as a faith-promoter, of course...
From one review:
>Sam Brannan, once seen as a "young lion of Mormonism," seemingly fell from grace over his zeal to see the Latter-day Saints settle in California. However, the Golden State was anathema to Brigham Young, who wished to keep the Saints out of harm's way in the isolation of the Great Basin. As Bagley astutely observes, "Few episodes in Samuel Brannan's life have come down in history as encrusted in myth as the story of his separation from Mormonism" (p.281). His self-imposed parting with the faith in favor of a life in California sealed Brannan's fate as a Mormon. In the nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint community, one who seemingly crossed Brigham Young put his church membership in jeopardy. By opting to go to the West Coast and encouraging others to do the same, Samuel Brannan dictated his own fate as a Mormon. But, as Bagley argues, Brigham Young's failure to answer Brannan's correspondence from California in 1848 left Brannan feeling "betrayed" (p. 281). Brannan was finally disfellowshipped from the faith in 1849, not for the theft of tithing monies but for "murder [i.e., the vigilante hanging of John Jekins in 18511 and apostasy" (p. 324-25).
>Sam Brannan died in San Diego in 1889. He was destitute. His life was marked by great successes and bone-deep failures. Once a Mormon zealot, later an apostate. The clarion of the Gold Rush who died a pauper. Was he a scoundrel? Perhaps.