The Lost Book of Mormon A Journey Through the Mythic Lands of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Kansas City, Missouri.

Literature was born not the day a boy crying wolf,

came running out of the Neanderthal Valley with a big gray wolf at his heels.

Literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf,

and there was no wolf behind him.

That the poor little fellow, because he lied too often,

was finally eaten up by a real beast, is quite incidental.

Young Joseph Smith swore that late one night in the fall of 1823, a spirit barefoot and luminous,

visited the cramped bedroom he shared with his brothers and told him the hidden history of America, a history that was engraved on gold plates,

that is gold pages bound by three large rings, buried in a hill down the road from the family farm.

As a youngish still struggling writer, I was enthralled by Joseph's stories,

and particularly by his impressive run as an underdon,

an underground American writer, a cult author, you might say.

Joseph's ambition to publish his Bible

struck me as a refreshingly honest acknowledgement of what it means to be a writer, a regular

Joe with an unreasonable faith in oneself and in literature.

I felt that there must be something in his story that would be

of value to an American writer today.

This is infants on throngs.

Philosophy of men being being with Human.

We are the Corps.

The Corps.

...