Reviews -- A Mormon Rebel



	A Mormon Rebel The Life and Travels of Frederick Gardiner

Salt Lake Tribune, Paul Swenson
Frederick Gardiner—Mormon convert, pioneer, self-taught medic, gifted chronicler of his own life and travels—could be called "outcast" or "exiled." But "rebel"? It just won't do.

It's difficult to tell whether Hugh Garner and his fellow editors of the series "Utah, the Mormons and the West" were searching for a salable title when they called this book A Mormon Rebel, or whether they hadn't carefully analyzed what had fallen into their hands. They have provided, however, a wealth of footnoted material that gives context to Gardiner's account.

That the manuscript of Gardiner's life story was preserved by his descendants and in 1971 passed into possession of the Mariott Library at the University of Utah is an obvious godsend. We learn from Garner's introduction that Gardiner's narrative is a synopsis he constructed late in life from earlier diary entries. But the editor further fuzzes the title's misnomer. He accurately lauds Gardiner's narration of "his role in one of the most fascinating periods of Amercan history—a period that saw the incredible Western movement, the drama of the frontier, 19th-century Mormondom and the agonies of the Civil War." He misses the mark, though, in concluding that "there is little in the remembrances to give us insight into Gardiner, the man."

On the contrary, seldom has a memoir of the period revealed more vividly the heart and soul of an individual than does Frederick Gardiner's straightforward report of his own life.

While he was not a particularly demonstrative person, Gardiner's amiability, humor, confidence and faith (and an eye for the sort of human detail that defines the texture of meaningful existence) spring off the page. He freely admits his own foibles, including an occasional taste for alcohol, and the ethical crises he faced as a self-made physician (he agonized over abortions he performed for women in difficult circumstances). But judging by the evidence of the text (his instinctive attempts to mediate and resolve conflict), there wasn't a rebellious bone in his body.

Gardiner's on-again, off-again relationship with Brigham Young apparently earned the book's "rebel" label. When Gardiner quit a 75-cents-a-day job as the keeper of Brigham Young's City Creek Canyon "Tollgate" (users of the canyon's wood were charged one-third wagon load of every load hauled out), Young took it as the first sign of apostasy and excommunicated him. Efforts to gain employment and feed his family took Gardiner to Ft. Bridger, Wyo., with Col. Albert Sidney Johnston's invading army and to Camp Floyd with U.S. troops. He worked in New Orleans during the Civil War in various medical capacities, visited his native England in a vain search for promised employment and returned to Utah in 1869, where a potential reconciliation with Young was dashed by Gardiner's decision to stay in Salt Lake City rather than accept a call to colonize southern Utah.

Gardiner could have resorted to bitterness or defensiveness or portrayed himself as a tragic victim of the paranoia of the times, but there is no hint of either in this narrative. His prose style pops in and out of present and past tense, lending a buoyancy and immediacy to his description.

Facing his own mortality as an old man, his faith in God remains instinctive. "Life is never dull with my four grandchildren. ? My days are numbered. It is now, while preparing for bed, there is a chill settling over my shoulders. It is now, in the quiet, I feel his Presence."