Girls in LDS literature: A letter to Deseret Book and its aftermath

Guest blogger Terrie Petree & Hollands tells the story of her struggle to find a publisher for her Book of Mormon story with a female protagonist, and the place of girls in Mormon literature.

Here is the letter I sent to the editors at Deseret Book, after their rejection of my Book of Mormon children’s story, “Liahona, Girl of Curious Workmanship.”

———————————————————————————————————-

Dear Editors,

Have you ever looked up the prophetess Huldah in the Bible Dictionary?

Our prophet speaks clearly about the role of women in the future of the church and the world at large. As a mother of young girls and a Gospel Doctrine teacher, I wrote “Liahona, Girl of Curious Workmanship” as the plausible though unproveable story of the Liahona’s provenance because I am bothered by the dearth of literature geared toward the girls who will fill the roles prescribed by the prophet. It is a crisis of both art and religion.

Perusing the children’s sections of LDS bookstores, I find young adult novels with female heroines who are orphaned, learned witchcraft or disappeared into magical worlds. There are also non-fiction books about girls who choose God. But where are the books that bridge the gap between high fantasy and frank reality? Where is the version of “Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites” in which the girls are the heroines and not consigned to the role of “pesky younger sister.” (That description is taken directly from the plot summary.)

Alarmingly, it gets worse. If a young girl is given a book about Book of Mormon characters, she’ll learn that Abinadi is brave, Ammon is helpful, Nephi is strong and Moroni is responsible. If she wants a female role model, the same book will teach her that she can be obedient like Sariah. Obedient like Sariah. Not strong. Not brave. Obedient. I understand and embrace the value of obedience in bringing us closer to God. However, with so few women in the scriptures and so many of their stories told in halves and quarters by the males at the helm of the narrative, how many young children will be able to distinguish obedience from subservience? How many grown adults can sift obedience from subservience in the scant and pale stories we have of the undoubtedly brave, responsible, helpful and strong women who have all but disappeared from the histories of sacred people? Sariah is also the only female figurine available for purchase in a set of Book of Mormon action figures. It pains me to see it, not because she is solitary but because the artist froze her in a murmur, hand on hip, eyebrows raised confrontationally as if all she ever did was complain. She walked every step that Lehi and Nephi walked. She ate raw meat and gave birth in the wilderness. Where is that story? Where is that figurine? My girls are growing up in a pandemic and an era of social and global upheaval. They deserve role models with grit and power.

Couldn’t we help these girls to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality? Wouldn’t more stories about powerful women, fiction and non-fiction alike, help them liken the scriptures unto themselves? Can’t we get rid of “pesky little sisters” in LDS literature and give our daughters a canon that they can sink their teeth into?

Again, have you ever looked up Huldah in the Bible Dictionary?

Sincere and concerned and ready to write,

Terrie Petree

---

I never received a reply to my letter. Fortunately, Hive Blog published the story. Here are my thoughts about the experience.

Huldah, the prophetess to whom kings and priests turned to know God’s will and for whom gates of the ancient temple were named, remains unmentioned in the Bible Dictionary and the Topical Guide. I wonder at myself for sending “Liahona” to Deseret Book in the first place. As a “wholly owned subsidiary,” Deseret Book is a clearinghouse for approved interpretations not a foundry for newform thinking. I knew that two years ago as much as I know it now. Why did I bother?

There’s a difference between what we talk about in gospel discussions and what we write about in LDS literature. The factual Huldah and the fictional Liahona are cautionary tales along that line, and, like it or not, Deseret Book is an arbiter of the standard. If a person raised her hand in Sunday School and said, “I recently read a story from Deseret Book about how the person who crafted the Liahona could have been female,” the femininity of the metallurgist becomes a plausible possibility. If the same person said, “I recently read a story on an LDS literary blog about how the person who crafted the Liahona could have been female,” then another person would raise his hand and caution her to consider her sources. (I am speaking from experience re: being called out for quoting blogs in Sunday School. I was the teacher.)

In submitting to Deseret Book, I hoped that “Liahona” would become a pretty little children’s book, and we would have bigger, better conversations about the unmentionables in the scriptures. Those conversations are happening, and they are already bigger and better than they were two years ago and certainly more so than when I was a twentysomething in the late nineties being brutally shut down by a Gospel Doctrine teacher when I broached male priesthood as a function of mortality and not eternity. Baby steps, young Terrie. Baby steps. (It was later discovered that the teacher so protective of his priesthood was having an affair. When his wife decided to leave him, the bishop told her that if she didn’t forgive her husband, she would be more guilty than he. So many stories, so little time.)

The baby steps are what I hoped to skip past by offering “Liahona” to Deseret Book. Perhaps I should have written explicitly about the “dearth of literature geared toward girls” and the “crisis of both art and religion” in the query instead of raising them after rejection. I hoped the DB stamp of approval would give my daughters and son a better shot at dissecting rote roles and real priesthood as freely in church classrooms as they do at home.

In the end, Hive Blog delivered where Deseret Book could not. Ultimately, Hive Blog and other Mormon blogs and zines follow more closely the example set by the Book of Mormon — a volume of radical religion published by an independent press – than do big, brand name LDS publishers. On those blogs and zines, writing takes us in the direction of freer, broader, bolder ideas. Ideas are the intellectual output of hope and hope “is the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness.” (“Hope,” LDS Gospel Topics)

Hope, like Huldah, doesn’t feature in the Bible Dictionary. Daystar does. Cummin does. Dog, dragon, dromedary. All there. Not hope, one of the three abiding virtues, nor the prophetess Huldah whose prophecies were so impactful that they rated mention in two different books of the Old Testament. Sharing that absence are other unmentionables – stories about girls of curious workmanship that won’t hit the shelves at Deseret Book but can contribute to the way we understand our radical religion.

---

Terrie Petree & Hollands is a writer living in Pacific Beach, California, with her husband and three children. Her fiction and nonfiction have been rejected more than 100 times since 2019, yet she still works every day at publishing her debut novel, “The Loca of San Blas” and her collection of essays and short stories, “A Book of Mormon Stories.” She wishes that no’s, near misses, and dashed hopes hurt less with accumulation.