Publisher's Synopsis
In the early 1800s, Moroni IX from Kolob, the fourth planet in the solar system, visits the third planet to recover records left behind by an ancestor on an earlier failed attempt at colonization of that world. Moroni encounters a young man native to the third planet and this book recounts Moroni's version of their interactions and efforts to return the lost records to the archives on the fourth planet. Moroni and the Tablets from Mars incorporates elements of early Mormon history but is offered as light entertainment and no more. In 2017 I published the novel WILDEST DREAMS, a tale about an author attempting to start a new novel in the months after his husband's death. Jack Talbot, the protagonist of WILDEST DREAMS, grew up as a Mormon in Idaho. His first published work was a science fiction tale called MORONI AND THE TABLETS FROM MARS, based loosely on the history of the origin of the Book of Mormon. Although Jack intended nothing more than a novel for Mormon middle school boys, a Latter-Day Saints bishop was outraged by what he viewed as sacrilege. He condemned the book and demanded its withdrawal by the publisher. As a result, Jack left the faith of his childhood and set out on the journey described in the rest of Wildest Dreams. Scattered throughout WILDEST DREAMS I included excerpts from Jack's imagined writings. I realized only after my book was published that it contained nothing from the one that got him in trouble. Following WILDEST DREAMS, I published a fictional memoir that had been sitting in my files for years and found myself pondering what to write next. One sunny day, as I drove to the local library where I volunteer, the answer struck me: I should write MORONI AND THE TABLERS FROM MARS. That is the origin of the book you hold in your hands.This volume also contains three other supposed Talbot tales. Part of the first, "The Prior's Cat and the Mother of Sorrows," appeared in Wildest Dreams. The beginning of "Penultimate, Wisconsin Pop. 631" was to be part of a collection of tales about a small non-existent community at the edge of the Badger State. "Empty Seats" features a Protestant church in Texas facing the challenges of integration in the 1960s. For the sake of full disclosure, I, Michael Dodd, assure you that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, nor have I been associated with it in any way. My knowledge of that community, its beliefs and customs is limited to things I have picked up from my reading and research or from equally casual conversations with the handful of Mormons that it has been my pleasure to know. Incidentally the only Mormon bishop of my acquaintance is as fine and kind a gentleman as one could wish to meet. I am sure he would have treated Jack more humanely than the fictional bishop in Wildest Dreams.Michael Dodd
