Review
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Title: Every Man a Prophet
Author: Stephen C. LeSueur
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Fiction
Year Published: 2025
Number of Pages: 389
Binding: Paperback, ebook
ISBN: 978-1-58958-826-4
Price: $31.57 – $49.17
Reviewed by Melvin Clarno Johnson for the Association for Mormon Letters
Stephen C. LeSueur’s novel Every Man a Prophet details the adventures of loyalty, individualism under pressure, and their unique confrontations and conflicts as young missionaries as well as those of their older priesthood leaders in the Norwegian mission of the early 1970s. In it, LeSueur crafts a chronicle intimately individual and echoingly meaningful to the group. Missionaries, church members, and leaders strive to find purpose and self-awareness within the established frameworks of their faith. The mountainous isolation of Norwegian culture is encapsulated in the snowy coldness of winter, reflecting the isolation of the young men’s internal struggles for connection.
Mission President Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Toressen is a prophetic personality of holiness, beloved by the Norwegian members but a figure who is sometimes distrusted by some in the apostolic leadership in Salt Lake City. Elders Pederson and Tanner are among the missionaries for whom he has a resolute overwatch. Eddie Pedersen, a young man with a testimony of the gospel, struggles with his gay yearnings while trying desperately to meet his sacred expectations. Orrin Tanner, immersed in the traditions of his church’s history and traditions, strives with unceasing effort to be the perfect missionary for whom too much is not enough.
Eddie and Orrin must travel an unknown road embedded in twists and turns that pit unique adventures against hierarchical oversight. The story is not all serious all the time, as revealed by a hilarious joke on a new greenie missionary that ends up with members in bathing suits filling up the bathroom for a supposed baptism in a members’ bathtub. The compelling descriptions are lifelike and immersive, bringing readers into the emotional depths of the characters at a gripping pace that keeps the readers fully engaged.
Every Man a Prophet is unique. It offers me a lifelong, interactive yet excommunicated individual involved with several Mormon expressions of the faith, as well as a complicatedly layered, emotionally complex observation of Mormon Restoration evangelical and ministerial lives. LeSueur’s ability to balance tenderness with knife-like hurt makes this novel a powerful and unforgettable read. Whether the reader is familiar with the intricacies of Latter-day Saint culture or simply drawn to stories of personal conversion, this novel will move the reader in profound ways.
Every Man a Prophet is a novel that not only entertains but also challenges readers to reflect on their own beliefs, identities, and sacrifices made in pursuit of faith. For me, it portrays what I think is the closest to capturing what it meant to be and live a missionary life with all of the attendant joys, events, and miseries that it encompasses. I laughed, I commiserated, I wept unabashedly, and I feel so much closer to my roots, even though I left 42 years ago.