Improvement and Progression (and another edition of a book)

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Last year I published the sixth edition of Reluctant Polygamist, and declared that I was done.

I figured that people had had three years to e-mail me and tell me I was wrong. What possibly could arise from the woodwork to cause me to face updating the index yet again?

And then I read Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females. And Joseph Johnstun told me why Marietta Holmes could not have been killed as a direct result of mob attack. And a Taylor relative explained which great-grandchild of John Taylor had gotten involved in post-polygamy plural marriage. And Andrew Ehat told me about the account of Oliver Cowdery urging Joseph to practice plurality, apparently during translation of the Book of Mormon. And Johnny Stephenson made a fuss about Law’s river-side brick “house” not being his actual residence (though Law did own the big brick building on the river).

And other things.

None of this changes the core premise, that Joseph Smith was an honorable leader who used covenants to protect and save his people. But it eventually became worth updating the text.

This draft of the 7th edition of Reluctant Polygamist has the final text, with significant changes noted by being in blue text (added names are highlighted, darn the need to make the index correct…). This is a gift to you who have followed me since 2013, so you can see the changes without having to read the entire thing all over again.

You’ll know I’m really, truly, never going to come back to this when the audio book is released. So I think I’m good to promise that this version really is the final time I’ll update the book.

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About Meg Stout

Meg Stout has been an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ (of Latter-day Saints) for decades. She lives in the DC area with her husband, Bryan, and several daughters. She is an engineer by vocation and a writer by avocation. Meg is the author of Reluctant Polygamist, laying out the possibility that Joseph taught the acceptability of plural marriage but that Emma was right to assert she had been Joseph's only true wife.

2 thoughts on “Improvement and Progression (and another edition of a book)”

  1. Meg, thanks for your efforts. Your theories give us a fresh look at the concept of JS and plural mattaige.

  2. I keep forgetting the most important update, which is that Louisa Beaman’s covenant with Joseph Smith didn’t occur until spring 1842. For over a century those attempting to figure out the chronology have thought Joseph covenanted with Louisa before Bennett’s reign of seduction. And so they always figured Bennett could be blamed on Joseph. But this new chronology (thanks to Bergera and Don Bradley) makes it clear that Bennett’s seduction of Nauvoo occurred before Joseph resumed attempting to establish the New and Everlasting Covenant.

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