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A review by michelleful
Papa Married a Mormon by John D. Fitzgerald
5.0
Got to this one at last due to a windstorm causing a blackout in my area. This is an apparently semi-(auto)biographical work by John D Fitzgerald, who wrote the Great Brain books aimed at children. I recently blew through them having read a subset as a child and then as an adult found them available on Kindle. This book has very much the same effect of transporting you to Utah in its frontier-town days.
We learn a good deal more about the family, especially the love story of John D's parents Tom and Tena, who are both such good people - Tena is practically a saint! It's very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the stories in here and the Great Brain books - Uncle Will is absent from the children's books but very much a central character here, and there's a sister Katie who was mysteriously disappeared from the Great Brain, maybe because she wasn't a boy? There's also a foster brother, but with a different name and a very different background. Tom is still a Great Brain, but much less is made of this fact. We see more of the struggle the family faced as a consequence of Tom and Tena's inter-faith marriage, and the choices the kids make as to religion are fascinating.
Just, overall, a compelling read. I cried at the end.
We learn a good deal more about the family, especially the love story of John D's parents Tom and Tena, who are both such good people - Tena is practically a saint! It's very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the stories in here and the Great Brain books - Uncle Will is absent from the children's books but very much a central character here, and there's a sister Katie who was mysteriously disappeared from the Great Brain, maybe because she wasn't a boy? There's also a foster brother, but with a different name and a very different background. Tom is still a Great Brain, but much less is made of this fact. We see more of the struggle the family faced as a consequence of Tom and Tena's inter-faith marriage, and the choices the kids make as to religion are fascinating.
Just, overall, a compelling read. I cried at the end.