A Little Lower than the Angels

When A Little Lower than the Angels appeared in 1942, its author and recent Brigham Young University graduate Virginia Sorensen was overwhelmed by the positive national attention. Clifton Fadiman, writing for The New Yorker, noted how “convincingly [she] explores . . . the tragic, comic, and grotesque problems of plural marriage.” Set in Nauvoo, Illinois, she tells the story of a single family, a woman and her Mormon husband, loosely based on her in-laws’ family history from the period and augmented by on-site research. The novel preceded the first scholarly treatment of Nauvoo by three years. As an outsider, Sorensen’s protagonist is puzzled by the city’s mysteries. Gradually, however, she discovers that a neighbor’s obsession with the LDS prophet is due to her polygamous marriage to him. Even so, Mercy Baker cannot foresee the complications that her own baptism will bring.