disappointed

Although I love to read, during the school year I tend to only read the assignments required for my classes. So when I heard that our relief society had a book club I decided to join (I figured that at least this way I would get in some sort of "pleasure" reading every once in a while). The book for September/October is "Emma: Woman of Faith" by Anita Stansfield. First of all, I don't necessarily love "churchy" books (mainly because I tend to find a lot of fault with them for several reasons). But I figured that I should give it a chance (after all I had read an entire Anita Stansfield series when I was in high school... my high school in Idaho was predominantly LDS and the school's library definitely reflected it).

It took me 1 week to get through the 210-pages. I was very disappointed with the story. I was expecting more insights to Emma's side of the story, but instead I felt like all I got was a regurgitation of what I already knew. I have a hard time believing that Emma didn't complain more than the book alleges. Books don't need to gloss over times when faith waivers. Even Nephi spent a section of his writings to explain how his mother's faith began to waver a bit. Hard times happen. We are all human. And the vast majority of us complain. Another thing that bothered me is that at the end of the book, instead of explaining what happened with Emma and the Church after Joseph died, the author chose to merely use the voice of Joseph and Emma's daughter, Julia, to say that Emma had a hard time after Joseph's death and didn't know who to trust.

Our book club will meet sometime this month to discuss the book, and apparently Anita Stansfield is going to be joining us. I'm looking forward to being able to hear, from Anita's point of view, why she decided to take the book in this direction. I am curious about what she was trying to convey with the book and whether she feels like she has accomplished what she set out to do. I also want to know how much research went into the book and how much involvement the Joseph Smith Jr. and Emma Hale Smith Historical Society had in the editing process.