Blood of the Faithful (28 page)

“It came down to this. Either Miriam was right and the Second Coming is here, or I am right and it isn’t. If this isn’t the end, then that means we have no choice. We have to rebuild. Not hunker down in our desert citadel, fighting off anyone who approaches, but open up to the outside world. We have so much knowledge here about how to survive, how to thrive, even. We can bring people in to teach them, can sell our surplus food. In return, people up north can help protect trade, can reopen coal mines and power plants. Provide law and order.

“It might take generations, maybe even hundreds of years, but I believe civilization can rebuild. And I want to be a part of it. It will mean lots of changes for our little valley and even for our beliefs as a people.”

He stopped and waited for the reaction. There was a long moment of hesitation, where he could see the troubled expressions, knew that it could go either way.

Then, instead of crying out angrily or dropping into a resentful silence, people began to weep and hug each other, and soon huge lines formed as people came up to shake his hand and embrace him.

He took it all in stunned silence.

Eliza waited for the crowds to disperse before she sought out Jacob. It was a good hour before the only ones left at the cemetery were the adults of the Smoot and Christianson families, who were still standing around their respective grave sites, speaking in hushed tones. David and his remaining wives stood with their children next to Miriam’s temporary grave marker.

Steve had taken the rest of the Christianson children back to the house, where the older kids were starting work on a huge family dinner. This would be the scene of another round of prayers and tributes. But Eliza had something to discuss with Jacob before then.

She first came to hug David, who was red-eyed and drawn, which sucked her into further interaction with all sorts of relatives. By the time she pulled away, she found Jacob by himself on the southern edge of the cemetery. She thought he’d be brooding again over the gravestones of children taken in century-old epidemics, but instead he was staring south, into the open desert.

“They’re lucky to have you,” Eliza said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Jacob turned and gave her a thin smile. “Compared to having Ezekiel Smoot or Taylor Kimball Junior as their leader? Yes, they’re quite lucky.”

“Compared to anyone.” She nodded toward the desert. “What are you looking at?”

“Just thinking. Wondering what it would be like to set off into the wilderness. I’ll bet there’s nothing down there for hundreds of miles. I could find a quiet, watered mountain valley and set up with my family.”

“How close were you?”

“To really leaving?” Jacob sighed. “Not very. I tried to work myself up to it, but I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair to my family—they would have been miserable. And could I leave Blister Creek without a doctor? No.”

“That’s it? No thought that you’re the best they’ve got?”

He smiled. “Maybe a little. Heaven knows I have my faults, but I’d be gone two days and the fundamentalist stuff would come back. I’ve got to coax our people through this change.” He gave her a curious look. “You were close too, weren’t you? To going full-fundie?”

Eliza hesitated at this, unable to answer right away. She needed to be honest with herself, even more than with her brother. “I was caught up in those scripture study nights,” she admitted. “The emotion, the rapture of it. A part of me wanted it to be true, to think that the Lord would come and relieve us of our suffering. The alternative, that we were alone, was almost too much to bear.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know, Jacob. When I reached Salt Lake I was reminded that there are a whole lot of other people out there. People who tell themselves different stories than we do. A thousand different, mutually contradictory stories about how the universe works. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong. I’m good with my path in life, but it’s not the only path.”

“I like that,” Jacob said. He was staring south again. “Do you think we could get McKay to send someone to Cedar City to be sure? There might have been some survivors, and we could bring them north. Panguitch is the next place to resettle, and it will be relatively well protected, sitting up above us and below Richfield. Hey, maybe you and Steve could go check it out. As soon as you’re ready to leave the valley again, I mean.”

Eliza cleared her throat. “Actually, about leaving the valley . . .”

He turned, and his face fell as he studied her expression, and she could see him guessing what she was going to say. Jacob knew her as well as she knew him.

“The governor offered us positions in the state government,” she continued. “Steve would be the new attorney general, and I would be head of agriculture.”

“It has to be you? There’s nobody else?”

“Nobody
better
. Steve has FBI credentials if anyone from the Federal government shows up. I’m a rancher’s daughter, with three years’ experience with post-collapse agriculture.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“It’s not like you’ll never see us,” she added, when she could no longer stand it. “We’ll be traveling up and down the state. Probably get down here two or three times a year.”

“Then why don’t you do it from Blister Creek and travel north when you need to, instead of the other way around?”

“Jacob,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I
want
to leave Blister Creek.”

He looked devastated, and more lonely than she could ever remember seeing him. He’d been counting on her, she knew, to be the fellow skeptic in a town of believers. The one who could share his snarky sense of humor, the irony of his position as a doubter leading a community of true believers.

Then the look vanished from his face, and he gave a warm, generous smile. “I get it, I know why you’re going. I’m jealous is all. Wish I could go too. Where will you live?”

“Salt Lake to start. Then, when things settle down, we were thinking about the Nephi area, if we can find a few settlers to join us. We’ll find an abandoned farm or orchard and see what we can do to bring it back around.”

“Nephi,” Jacob said. “That’s a good Book of Mormon name. Father would approve.”

“Also, it’s drier than Provo or Salt Lake, more like the desert I’m used to. Beautiful mountains too. And it wouldn’t be quite so far to travel to come visit. A good place to start a family, don’t you think?”

“A great place. And of course if that doesn’t work out, you know where you’ll always be welcome.”

“Of course.”

Eliza took his hand and tugged him back toward where the rest of the family was waiting, including Fernie, who looked at them from her wheelchair, no doubt wondering what they were scheming about.

“I love you, big brother,” she said.

“I love you too, kid.”

“Things will turn out just fine.”

“You know,” Jacob said, “I think you might be right.”

AFTERWORD

When I first turned my thoughts to writing a series set in a fundamentalist community, I had no idea what I was getting into. An agent who wanted to represent
The Righteous
was the first to convince me that it could be a series, but her idea was to have Jacob be a forensic anthropologist who moved out of the community after the first book. Oh, and could I cut all this talk about angels and never have my main character consider that any of this stuff might be real? She said that the story as I conceived it would descend into the realm of fantasy, and that would never sell. Needless to say, I blew off this advice.

In fact, the only thing I took from that conversation was the word “series.” When I wrote the second book,
Mighty and Strong
, I had not yet sold the first novel, so I needed it to serve as its own stand-alone in case someone wanted
Mighty and Strong
, but not
The Righteous
. However, by the time I wrote
The Wicked
, not only did I have a contract pending from Thomas & Mercer, but I had started to understand what this series was about.

It was not about solving individual murders or having each book be a cult-of-the-day mystery. Instead, it was about the role of belief versus doubt in a faith community, how believers may be motivated to commit either good or evil by following the same teachings, and of course, the role of women in a patriarchal community. One thing I was absolutely sure about was that I did not want my female characters to be either brainwashed fools or dominated by men. More on that below.

I’ve received a few comments and questions over and over.

What are you trying to pull here? Are you a Mormon, an anti-Mormon, or what? Is this religious fiction?

You don’t have to look very far into my reviews to see that The Righteous books make some people angry, and the public reviews are only a hint at what I’ve seen in my inbox. At first this bothered me, but over time I’ve taken it as a sign that I’m writing something different and challenging, both for me and for the reader.

It will come as no surprise to readers that I have personal experience with the subject of these books. I was raised in a small religious town in Utah, and I have polygamists in my own family history. About fifteen years ago I went through a difficult period where I had lost the faith of my childhood and felt ostracized, deceived, and angry. Over time, I have come to peace with my own background, with my family and friends from my community, but I have never regained the belief I had as a child.

I think of myself as both insider and outsider. I always wanted to portray the believers of Blister Creek as real people, no more likely on average to be good or bad than anyone else, but sincere about their beliefs. At the same time, I am not naïve about the very real costs of living in such a closed community.

This whole series is really weird. So what are the books about, anyway?

Strangely, I began work on the final volume without knowing how the story would play out. The previous couple of books had focused on the end of the world, but I had not yet decided whether or not it would actually end, or if there would be a rebuilding of civilization.

At its core, this was a question of faith versus doubt, which is where I began the series. Of course, I have wrestled with other issues, the differing and complementary roles of men and women in a fundamentalist religion being chief among them, but also questions of power, of family ties, and the value of community as opposed to individualism. But Jacob’s and Eliza’s doubt and faith have remained at the heart of the series.

If the world ended, that would be a major nod toward faith, something I dabbled with in earlier books, especially
Destroying Angel
, where it seems for a time that there is a real religious and supernatural element. In this ending, Miriam’s vision would be the correct one. Jacob’s doubt would be the danger that could destroy Blister Creek when the times called for faith.

However, if the world did not end, if it looked as though civilization could rebuild, then that would be saying something completely different. I thought of Jacob on one side, Miriam and her all-consuming faith on the other, and Eliza as the character who could go either way. Miriam’s death, combined with Eliza leaving the community at the end, represents a repudiation of the end-of-times thinking that has penetrated, and some might say poisoned, the community since its founding.

Is the series over?

Yes, for now. But I thought it was over once already. I was starting book #5,
Destroying Angel
, when my publisher offered me the chance to write three more volumes. I decided if I were going to do that, then I couldn’t simply repeat what I’d already done. That’s when I began to wonder what would happen to this religious community preparing for the end of the world if the world really did end. That was more than enough fuel to write three more books.

I would need some other compelling reason to continue the story, but I will say that I have a few more story ideas like my novella about the childhood of Abraham Christianson,
Trial by Fury
, that would take smaller story ideas and dig into them. That would be the most likely manner for me to continue the story, at least in the short term.

In the meantime, I hope you will take a look at some of my other books. Chances are, if you’ve followed me through eight books of this series you will find that I have other interesting things to say, albeit in completely different settings.

As I close this chapter of my writing career, I want to thank my friend Grant Morgan, whose thoughts helped shape the series, my agent, Katherine Boyle, and the wonderful team at Thomas & Mercer. To build a writing career takes years of effort, some of it lonely and frustrating. I want to thank my wife, Melinda, for her support during this time. Finally, I want to thank my readers who have stuck with me for eight books, not knowing where I would go, but interested in both the destination and the journey to get there. I hope I have delivered something unexpected and thought-provoking.