Book picks similar to
Before the Dawn by Dean Hughes
lds-fiction
historical-fiction
fiction
lds
Loving Frank
Nancy Horan - 2007
I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion. Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.
The Porter Rockwell Chronicles: Vol. 1
Richard Lloyd Dewey - 1999
A strong story holds reader interest and history comes alive for adults and teens alike. Volume 1 begins with his childhood years in New York where he becomes best friends with the future Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. The story continues through Porters settlement with the Mormons in Missouri, where he fights against mobs. See the engaging yet humorous courtship with a young woman he meets and is determined to marry. Porter proves himself in friendship and loyalty to the prophet. As a teen, he also becomes the protector of his neighbors from anti-Mormon mobs. Dynamite initial volume of the series is historical fiction at its best accurate, engrossing, and full of adventure and humor. First printing sold out in only 8 days. Now in 4th printing (Hardcover)
Mary, Called Magdalene
Margaret George - 2002
In a vivid re-creation of Mary Magdalene's life story, Margaret George convincingly captures this renowned woman's voice as she moves from girlhood to womanhood, becomes part of the circle of disciples, and comes to grips with the divine.While grounded in biblical scholarship and secular research, Mary, Called Magdalene ultimately transcends both history and fiction to become a "diary of a soul."
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard L. Bushman - 2005
Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations. An arresting narrative of the birth of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling also brilliantly evaluates the prophet’s bold contributions to Christian theology and his cultural place in the modern world.
Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival
Velma Wallis - 1993
In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Therese Anne Fowler - 2013
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.
Through His Eyes: Rethinking What You Believe About Yourself
Virginia H. Pearce - 2011
Why? Our beliefs drive our emotions and actions. They provide a filter through which we see ourselves and our world. But not everything we believe is true. Some of our beliefs were established in childhood and have outlived their usefulness. Others are left over from situations or circumstances that are no longer relevant. Some are rules that we apply only to ourselves. And some of our beliefs are simply based on half-truths or lies. Learning how to identify and challenge those untrue beliefs enables us to replace negative thoughts and emotions and to embrace the life that God intended for us. In her first inspirational book since A Heart Like His, author Virginia Hinckley Pearce helps us: Examine and reevaluate negative beliefs that wreak havoc with our emotions and behavior. Challenge rules that we apply only to ourselves. Discover self- defeating thoughts to toss out of our belief box. Learn to identify and strengthen truths that encourage and uplift.
The Simeon Solution: One Woman's Spiritual Odyssey
Anne Osborn Poelman - 1995
Promised through the Holy Ghost that he would not die before the long-awaited Messiah, Simeon apparently spent much of his life watching for fulfillment of that promise. Surely there must have been times of doubt, moments when it seemed foolish to cling to such a hope, but his faith was at last rewarded when he was shown the infant Jesus in the temple and recognized him as the Savior of the world.In The Simeon Solution, Anne Osborn Poelman describes how she, like Simeon, learned to trust in the Lord and have patient faith in the ultimate fulfillment of his promises. When she was a medical student at Stanford University she discovered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, finding in it the spiritual fullness for which she had been searching since childhood. She joined the Church and went on to become an internationally known expert in her medical specialty. At age thirty-eight she married Elder Ronald E. Poelman, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. In this book she shares many personal experiences that have demonstrated the workings of the Simeon solution in her own life.
Fever
Mary Beth Keane - 2013
Working in the kitchens of the upper class, she left a trail of disease in her wake, until one enterprising and ruthless “medical engineer” proposed the inconceivable notion of the “asymptomatic carrier”—and from then on Mary Mallon was a hunted woman. In order to keep New York’s citizens safe from Mallon, the Department of Health sent her to North Brother Island where she was kept in isolation from 1907-1910. She was released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. Yet for Mary—spoiled by her status and income and genuinely passionate about cooking—most domestic and factory jobs were heinous. She defied the edict.Bringing early twentieth-century New York alive—the neighborhoods, the bars, the park being carved out of upper Manhattan, the emerging skyscrapers, the boat traffic—Fever is as fiercely compelling as Typhoid Mary herself, an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the hands of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes an extraordinarily dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable character.
The Other Einstein
Marie Benedict - 2016
Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. It is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most twenty-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.
Pope Joan
Donna Woolfolk Cross - 1996
She is the legend that will not die–Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak–and his identity–and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom–wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price . . .In this international bestseller, Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.
Within the Dark Hills
Sian Ann Bessey - 2012
Davies. Without family and tainted by scandal, she’s in dire need of a new identity and an occupation to match. Equally bleak is the future of Evan Powell, a miner who harbors dreams of escaping the black mines that are slowly killing him and finding refuge under the promised blue skies of America. But recently, the wife who Evan adored died, leaving the devoted father struggling to care for his young daughter, Jane.To benefit both Annie and Evan, the kindly reverend arranges a marriage of convenience, one that is quietly contracted in a hasty ceremony—an event that sparks pointed gossip among those in the small Welsh town and outright rejection from Evan’s family. Annie must tread carefully lest she let slip anything about her past— particularly when she learns that her former master has been afoot, inquiring about a missing maid. More importantly, she feels she must avoid any emotional entanglements with Evan, who remains devoted to his beloved deceased wife. But as Evan works with Annie to care for Jane, Evan knows their relationship is growing into something more and must face the torments of a divided heart. And in the midst of Mormon missionaries preaching a strange new religion, disaster strikes the town and Annie’s troubled history can no longer be hidden.
Christmas with the Prophets
Laura F. Willes - 2010
Grant included on his 1945 Christmas cards? Christmas with the Prophets provides glimpses into the individual Christmas celebrations of each President of the Church, with recurring themes of missionary efforts, Church work, family, and service. Some of the vignettes are personal, others soul-stirring, poignant, and tender. Often their experiences and messages reflect the world conditions at that time and serve as little snapshots of history. Illustrated throughout with historical photographs and illustrations, each story of a Christmas past reminds us of the wondrous birth of the baby of Bethlehem, the Lord Jesus Christ. Discover how each Church President has celebrated Christmas, from Joseph Smith to Thomas S. Monson Beautifully designed and illustrated A Christmas keepsake for every Latter-day Saint family
White Houses
Amy Bloom - 2018
Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, "Hick," as she's known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have.She moves into the White House, where her status as "first friend" is an open secret, as are FDR's own lovers. After she takes a job in the Roosevelt administration, promoting and protecting both Roosevelts, she comes to know Franklin not only as a great president but as a complicated rival and an irresistible friend, capable of changing lives even after his death. Through it all, even as Hick's bond with Eleanor is tested by forces both extraordinary and common, and as she grows as a woman and a writer, she never loses sight of the love of her life.From Washington, D.C. to Hyde Park, from a little white house on Long Island to an apartment on Manhattan's Washington Square, Amy Bloom's new novel moves elegantly through fascinating places and times, written in compelling prose and with emotional depth, wit, and acuity.
Charly
Jack Weyland - 1980
And then meet Charly, the sparkling, quick-witted girl who steps into his world and turns it upside down. Their courtship is a never-ending round of ups and downs- literally. On their first date Charly tricks Sam into taking a Ferris wheel ride, then tells the operator they're engaged! All of this seems to be a little more than Sam can cope with. But he gradually comes to appreciate Charly's point of view. From the girl who loves to laugh, he learns to do the same. He finds out for the first time what it's like to be really alive. Charly is a story of joy and spontaneity, learning and loving, and, most of all, growing.