Holy Joe! Prophet, Seer, and Revelator by Just Judy
A former Mormon writing a novel based on the life of the founder of this church might well be expected to produce an exposé. But Holy Joe! Prophet, Seer and Revelator by Just Judy is instead a heavily researched book based on firsthand information and documentation by historical characters.
The facts are sensational enough: Born in 1805, Joseph Smith was a poor farm boy in upstate New York with a reputation as a “money-digger” for finding lost things using a “seer stone,” and performing magic rituals. He also had a vivid imagination for telling stories about Native Americans and the burial mounds they’d left behind. Before he was killed by an anti-Mormon mob in 1844, he’d produced the writings that inform today’s Mormon beliefs and organized the beginnings of the church that has more than 17 million members today.
Gleaning Facts From a Legacy of Faith
But first, an explanation from the author about her name: “Just Judy is my legal name, but not the name I was born with. I was born Judy with my father’s name, later became Judy with my husband’s name, and after 35 years of life without a husband or a father, I went to court and became myself,” she explains.
When she was a Mormon, Just Judy says, “I read much of Mormon history as written by the church’s historians. Eventually, I came to doubt and found secular references to the beginning of Mormonism and lost my faith. My book takes all who have interest back to the time when Mormonism began and recreates the events of the past as presented by secular history.”
Smith was not unusual for his time. The Age of Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that valued science and reason hadn’t spread very far into America’s dark frontier. People relied on folk beliefs like dowsing, superstitions and practical magic.
Also, in the early 1800s, Smith’s area of upstate New York became known as “the burned-over district” for its traveling preachers and their fire-and-brimstone revivals as they sought to attract parishioners to their particular brands of belief.
Birth of the Mormon Church
Just Judy writes that Smith’s father had visions. Angels appeared to him and he said he felt the love of God but eschewed the organized churches. Smith’s mother attended church and attempted to raise her 11 children in Christ. Joseph Smith sampled the various local strains of Christianity but felt drawn to none.
As the Mormon canon tells it, Smith at age 14, had a vision in which God directed him to listen to his son, Jesus Christ. His second vision was an appearance of the angel Moroni who told him about the Book of Mormon written on golden plates. Moroni, Smith said, told him where the plates were buried, and that Smith must translate what was written on the plates.
Smith allegedly recovered the plates but kept them hidden, telling all who would wish to see them that to do so meant sudden death. Because he could not write himself, he enlisted his wife, Emma, as his first of many scribes to write as he dictated the accounts of ancient prophets. The Book of Mormon was published in 1830, and Smith began organizing his church.
Rising Tensions
Just Judy devotes the larger part of her book to untangling the events of the following 14 years as Smith and his followers migrated west, seeking land to build a community in which resources would be shared. They first settled in Ohio, then moved to Missouri, and finally, Illinois, often meeting with violent resistance.
Although Mormons identify as Christians, non-Mormons called them heretics, distrusted the growing number of Mormons, and feared Smith’s aspirations for political power and his large armed militia, the Nauvoo Legion. After Missouri’s governor ordered that “Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state,” he survived an assassination attempt and Smith was charged as an accessory.
And then there was the polygamy issue. Smith tended to recruit “plural wives,” says Just Judy. “Depending on who is doing the counting, Joseph had up to 49,” she writes.
What Comes Next?
Among Holy Joe’s merits is its extensive bibliography. Just Judy’s portrayal of Smith draws dozens of books, contemporaneous accounts, newspaper articles and court records of Smith’s trials. At the time of his murder, Smith was in jail, charged with inciting riot and treason.
“Joseph Smith had the ability to hold men under his spell as he told his tales and brought forth revelations that he claimed to be the word of God,” writes Just Judy in her introduction. “With his love of ceremony, pageantry, parade and solemn ritual, he offered his people an eternal plan of progression, an afterlife without a heaven or hell, and, for some, the right to become a god.”
Just Judy is currently writing a second novel about the time of Brigham Young, who succeeded Smith as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Nefarious Elders and Long-Suffering Saints (a working title) will be a four-part story covering the westward migration of 5 thousand Mormons to the Utah territory, the building of what was to become Salt Lake City, and the “Fall of Zion” as non-Mormons moved into Utah and Brigham Young grew old. It’s a “gripping tale,” she says.
Just Judy is a retired business professional who currently resides in Farmers Branch, TX. She became captivated by Mormon frontier history after converting to the faith of Mormonism and later discovering the true history of the church. Books written by Emma Hale (Joseph’s first wife) Lucy Smith (Joseph’s mother), early court records, and many non-fiction biographies made it clear the Mormonism she was taught by the elders was very different from the Mormonism revealed by the first-hand accounts.
Just Judy is neither pro nor anti-Mormon. She takes a strong stand for history and enjoys re-creating events according to historical documentation. She is currently working on her second book, also a frontier fiction with Mormon characters and ideals.
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