Liz Busby | Writer

As Michael Collings noted in his classic article on depictions of Latter-day Saints in speculative fiction, one of the science fiction common uses of the Church is as a governmental structure in post-apocalyptic fiction. Once the world has been destroyed, governments fall and alternate structures take its place. When the western United States is mentioned, that usually means a casual mention of the Church maintaining order. (Orson Scott Card did a take of this trope from an LDS perspective in Folk of the Fringe.)

What Collings didn’t note was that the same idea carries over into many books in the alternate history genre. Alternate history is an interesting part of the speculative fiction universe in that these books don’t necessarily contain the same reality-breaking tropes typical of science fiction or fantasy: no aliens, robots, or magic. (Though some do: shoutout to Lee Allred’s Clockwork Deseret universe.) Instead, they speculate by changing a key moment in history and projecting possible societal changes forward. This creates a world that feels speculative, even though it may be entirely realistic (or to be more precise, mimetic). Alternate history novels often focus on a different ending to some key moment in history like the Civil War (eg Bring the Jubilee) or WWII (eg The Man in the High Castle). if America is part of the setting, there’s often a throwaway reference to some kind of state or territory called Deseret out in the west.

This brings us to Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, which won this year’s Sidewise Award for Alternate History. My friend Paul Williams who studies alternate history novels brought this one to my attention. He pointed out that the author is a religious guy (he’s also written a book of Christian apologetics, titled ironically Unapologetic) and that this novel had a small but significant portrayal of an alternate Deseret.

Since the audiobook was currently available through my library, I picked it up and blasted through it fairly quickly. The general premise of the book is that the initial colonizers of the Americas brought over a less virulent strain of smallpox, immunizing many of the indigenous people. The result is a lot more native peoples live through the early colonization era. They form an alliance with the Jesuits, who help them find an acceptable way to syncretize Catholicism with indigenous religions. They travel north and rehabilitate the abandoned native metropolis of Cahokia into a territory largely governed and inhabited by indigenous people (referred to by the unified name of Takata) that eventually join the union as a free state during the Civil War.

From an LDS perspective, we could see this conjecture as similar to the project of the Book of Mormon, which casts the native peoples of America as ancient Christians. There’s a long history of people looking for evidence of Book of Mormon geography to syncretize various drawings and legends with the narrative. Spufford has caught some flack for his syncretism as drawing away from authentic indigenous speculative fiction. Granted that I have no skin in the game, but Spufford’s supposition seems like a reasonable one from a historical perspective. It would hardly be the first time in history that Christianity blended in local religious practices to make itself more successful. I’m thinking about all those Catholic Saints who seem to have been syncretized with local pagan deities, like Brigit/Brigid in Ireland.

Let’s set that aside. Since my wheelhouse is portrayals of Mormons, let’s look at what amounts to a fairly fleshed-out (yet still background) description of the alternate history of the Latter-day Saints. Deseret, Brigham Young, and other Mormon items crop up in the book less than a dozen times, but the pieces still paint an interesting picture:

• Apparently, there’s still a restoration of some kind. Joseph Smith doesn’t get a mention, but Brigham Young apparently leads the saints to the west, so Joseph’s presence is implied. However, the reaction to the restoration is modulated by the increased Catholic presence in America. It seems to be more of a “we’ll deal with those heretics later,” rather than “these religious ideas are dangerous now.” It’s the kind of long-term, centuries-rather-than-decades thinking that I’ve come to associate with a Catholic approach.
• Polygamy makes it all the way to the 1920s. The story’s present-day newspapers contain headlines about polygamy as a sticking point for the negotiations for Deseret to enter the union.
• There’s a Mormon temple that looks like a “pink wedding cake” in the heart of the midwestern city where the story is set. I’m guessing this is based on the Community of Christ temple in Independence, but it’s not really clear. Yet somehow the main body of Latter-day Saints still ended up in the west. I guess with the presence of Cahokia, Nauvoo wouldn’t have been as much of a frontier as it was in our timeline. But why go to Nauvoo? The book is silent on this; it only indicates that the Takata thought their safety was benefitted by separating the white people into warring groups, and thus they aided the Mormons on their journey westward. Presumably, Cahokia’s presence as an independent country also helped them establish Deseret as an independent state. Cahokia decides to join the union in the civil war because they are starting to being outnumbered, while it appears Deseret is still considering, right up to the story’s present.
• Brigham Young seems to be much more friendly to natives. There’s a prominent scene in the “palace” of the now-symbolic monarch of Cahokia, which showcases a painting of a native council negotiating with business tycoons over the location of cross-continental railroad lines, and Brigham Young gets a seat at the table. This leads me to . . .
• Questionable understanding of LDS sartorial choices. In this painting, Brigham Young is pictured in a prophetic robe embroidered with lightning. (Yes, we have robes, but not those kind, and they presumably wouldn’t have been worn to a political negotiation.) But this could be forgiven as the painting is explicitly historiography; the book draws attention to how the painting inaccurately dolls up each of the native representatives in maximum costume, when the real negotiation was much rougher. But prophetic robes as a Mormon ethnic costume? I suppose it’s better than pioneer garb.

Anyway, I highly recommend Cahokia Jazz all on its own, even if you aren’t interested in the Mormon references. It’s got a compelling detective plot and some interesting things to say about a multi-ethnic Christianity, and there may or may not be some magic going on in the end. Definitely worth your time.