The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey

Monday, November 2 through Friday, November 27, 2020. Read by Norman Gilliland.

In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect’s leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king.

(Little, Brown and Company; ISBN-10: 0316463590)

THEME: “Hard Times Come Again No More” by Stephen Foster, performed by Trevor Stephenson from “Music of Debussy, Brahms, Bartok & Foster” 1997 Light & Shadow.