himself, as John Greenleaf Whittier put it, "a miracle and a marvel" (158). He aroused deep loyalties and rankling hatreds. The hatreds finally destroyed him; the loyalties kept alive his movement after him.

I have dwelt on these familiar beginnings, at once so exotic and native to the American grain, to emphasize their relevance to our contemporary storytelling. The Mormon past as a continuing presence begs for imaginative treatment, particularly when the impact of the past on our present creates a conflict of cultures or a crisis of belief. The very title of the most recent collection of contemporary Mormon short fiction, Bright Angels and Familiars, edited by Eugene England, the dean of Mormon literary scholar ship, suggests the range of possibilities.3

Whatever the repudiations, alterations, accommodations, and postponements inMormon doctrine and practice through the years, both the changes and continuities provide the contemporary writer with a horn of plenty. The urge to make credible an incredible story, especially if it is the story of one's own ancestry, can be irresistible.

"Almost I have heard The Call," Virginia Sorensen once wrote me, many years ago. She had just read my article "Through Immigrant Eyes: Utah History at the Grass Roots" in the Utah Historical Quarterly. She sounded as excited as Lucius Fenn in his day: "For years and years," she wrote, "I have believedfor what reason, I wonder, since I never really lived in the houses where the true tradition was but could only visit a while, and listen, and pause always by the gate where I could