Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse, a review

Review and musings by Doug Gibson

The late Utah-born author John D. Fitzgerald is certainly not a household name, but many of his books, primarily the youth fiction "The Great Brain" series, are both recalled and loved by I'd wager millions. In the 1950's, long before he started "The Great Brain" books, he wrote "Papa Married a Mormon," a major best seller. (Our review is here). That novel had several printings. A sequel, "Mamma's Boarding House," also sold well. Both are easily accessible today, "Papa Married a Mormon" can be bought for within $20, "Mama's Boarding House" is a bit more expensive, usually. Fitzgerald wrote a third novel, "Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse," and I promise to get to that as soon as I've finished my beginning musings.

The above-mentioned series and novels relate the lives of the Fitzgerald family in a fictional Utah town named Adenville. The time period runs from the late 19th century into the first dozen or so years of the 20th century. Close to Adenville, in southern Utah, is a mining town later turned ghost town named Silverlode. Tom D. Fitzgerald is Papa and the Mormon he married is Tena Nielsen Fitzgerald. Children of the Fitzgeralds who are prominent in the books include John D., (the author of the novels) and his older brothers Tom D. and Sweyn D.

Fitzgerald is a marvelous storyteller. The books are mostly arranged in chapters that tell a distinct tale from beginning to end. The author manages to do this while keeping the flow of the novel. There are minor inconsistencies of time frame and character events but they are subtle and do not distract from an enjoyable reading experience.

Fitzgerald's writing style has been compared to Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Steinbeck and Harper Lee. He vividly describes the regional western era of the state he grew up in, with idealized, often-moralistic depictions of sheriffs, newspapermen, gamblers, saloon keepers, Latter-day Saint bishops, Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, teachers, mothers, dads, children, merchants, gunslingers, con men, miners, team of horses drivers, bigots, dance hall girls, Native Americans and even town drunks. Often in the chapters a negative influence in the moral tale will reform and become a positive influence within both diverse communities, Mormon, straight-laced Adenville, and the more "back-street, hell-raising" Silverlode, later represented as East Adenville. In other chapters the negative influence either dies at the hand of justice, or suffers appropriate monetary loss/comeuppance, or is sent off to jail.

While I may make no claim that Fitzgerald is the equal of Charles Dickens (there are probably only 8 or 9 writers in history his equal) I see a type of Western America "Dickensian-like" talent in Fitzgerald as he describes both the personal appearance, speech, and colorful personalities and antics of his many characters.

UNCLE WILL AND THE FITZGERALD CURSE

Time to get to the review of the above-mentioned book. It involves the life of a prominent character, Will D. Fitzgerald, Tom's brother and uncle to the children. In "Papa Married a Mormon," we meet this very rich owner of the White Horse Saloon and gambling hall in Silverlode. He is an agnostic and skeptic, but extremely fair and pragmatic. A longtime gambler, he worked his way across the country, earning his wealth initially through gambling, and killing several men in gun draws. He's a positive, loved member of the family who uses his considerable intellect, wits and wealth to help resolve some crisis in the novels.

"Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse" is Will's story. A significant portion of the book is spent on Will's childhood, in the Fitzgerald family home in Pennsylvania. Already a headstrong child, Will reacts negatively to his maternal grandfather moving into the home. He is an autocratic religious bigot who -- with his father's enabling -- takes over authority in the house. His mother is also plagued with religious intolerance, but also is a loving influence. Will and his grandfather clash over several years, with Will slowly defying his parents, and the community. He turns into a known troublemaker, non-conformist, "bad seed."

There is a chapter, early in the book, in which Will, in his upper mid teens, is seduced by an unhappy early-middle-aged female librarian, who harbors a past romantic grudge against his father. The sexual seduction passages are not explicit, but is a bit shocking, perhaps more today where a mature adult seducing an impressionable teen is considered a criminal offense rather than a "rite of passage."

When Will turns 18 his father describes in detail the Fitzgerald family curse, which evolves from an Irish descendant named Dennis who turned traitor in the old country. Due to the treachery, a curse was placed on one male child of each generation. Several sons die ignoble deaths. In Will's family, the "cursed" one is predicted to suffer a fate worse than death. Although Will has heard his father scoff at the curse's veracity, listening this time, he senses his father believes he is cursed. He leaves his family at 18 on very formal, chilly terms, determined to become a gambler, head West, and build an empire. (I forget to mention that the aggrieved father who set the curse dictated that all male descendants of the traitor carry the middle name, Dennis.)

Will's travels through the West and the early years of his adult life take him through St. Louis, where he meets a mentor who teaches him to gamble successfully, with advice to live a detached life. Regarding women, the mentor says, "Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap."

Silver Plume, Colorado, which is a real place (I've been there) is the next major, long-term stop in Will's education. He takes a high-level gambling position with a successful saloon owner, with an eye toward buying the saloon'gambling hall one day and having his empire. He also gains a measure of prominence in the mining town. As always there are very descriptive characters, sort of Damon Runyun-esque, if the late Broadway scribe had written about the mining town West, about parlor house madams, female saloon owners, bullies, gamblers, miners, old-timers ...

His tenure in Silver Plume teaches a maturing Will several harsh realities caused by the life choices and viewpoints he's followed. He initiates a physical relationship with a beautiful showgirl, mistaking lust and a desire to possess her for love. She wants a wedding ring, and eventually leaves the relationship.

Later, he falls even harder for a newspaperman's daughter. She's a pretty young woman, charitable and religious. She represents conventionality, something that Will has rejected. My opinion is that Will sees in her the values he first learned in his youth. He mistakes his response to her purity, charity and friendship as love. She rejects him, preferring a more conventional mate, and a  conventionally decent life, although she lacks the maturity to understand that the "decent" homes she tells Will she wants her children to play in may not not necessarily be populated with decent adults.

Will painfully discovers, during his failed courtship, that prominent men with whom he rubs shoulders with will never accept him into their society or families.

It's actually a blessing that she rejects him, but it crushes Will, who leaves Silver Plume and wanders for a long time -- distracted -- until he wills himself to forget her. His despair during that time causes him to think that maybe he is a cursed Fitzgerald.

Will eventually makes his way to Silverlode and uses his gambling skill to win The White Horse Saloon in a high-stakes game with the owner, but has to outdraw and kill him afterward. Soon after, he finds a healthy, lifetime love.

"Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse" is a great read, as satisfying as "Papa Married a Mormon" and "Mama's Boarding House." I sense it didn't sell as well as the others. It's a very expensive book to buy used; I've only seen first editions for sale. I owned a copy for years, but lost it in a 1997 move across country. I finally bought a copy for $150 a few weeks ago. Usually copies run $250 and above. I've added three links (here, here and here) to buy used copies. (I will add that I am skeptical of any offer for under $100). Readers who can't afford a copy should write to libraries and see if they will photocopy the book for a reasonable price. The book is out of print, so I imagine there is no legal impediment. I have receives photocopied pages of books from libraries.

I've written a lot about Fitzgerald and his work, on another blog, Plan9Crunch. Here is one and another is a review of the film version of "The Great Brain." It was released in 1978.

Fitzgerald researcher Carrie Lynn runs the valuable Finding Fitzgerald blog. She is also the author of a recent book, Finding Fitzgerald. It answers many long sought-after questions about the people who represented the characters in Fitzgerald's novels and how the author's hometown of Price, Utah, represents both "Adenville" and "Silverlode." You can buy Finding Fitzgerald here. I have done a review of the book here and interviewed Ms Lynn here. (Below is a photo of author John D. Fitzgerald).

'Papa Married a Mormon' a 'Mormon-loves-gentile' story

Few people really understand the fear felt by Mormons in the genesis of the faith's flight to Utah to avoid what members perceived as severe persecution in Missouri and Illinois. In the latter half of the 19th century non-Mormons, or "gentiles" were regarded as intruders in "Zion" bent on either crushing the saints or forcibly removing them from their third homeland. In “The Kingdom or Nothing,” Samuel Taylor's biography of Mormon prophet John Taylor, when settlers heard rumors of a planned U.S. military "invasion" upon the Utah territory, church settlers abandoned the new Salt Lake City and trudged south to Provo, leaving instructions to a few left behind to burn everything if the soldiers assumed command of the city.

These sentiments are nearly gone, although stronger generations ago, when Utahn John D. Fitzgerald wrote the popular novel “Papa Married a Mormon.”

Times have changed, and “Papa Married a Mormon” has been adapted to the stage many times in Utah. The novel, first published in 1955 by Prentice Hall, is easy to find at used bookstores. Two sequels followed: “Mama's Boarding House,” and “Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse.”

Set in the 1880s and ’90s in the fictional southern Utah towns of Adenville and Silverlode, the most unique aspect of Fitzgerald’s novel is that only a small portion of it is true, and that’s with a healthy dose of journalistic license, no doubt. Fitzgerald is writing about his family: His Uncle Will, who leaves Pennsylvania in disgrace to seek a life as a gambler/​gunslinger; His father Tom, Sr., who obeys a deathbed wish to find Will and tracks him down, finding him a rich saloon and gambling hall owner in Silverlode, a mining town close to the Mormon settlement of Adenville, which is headed by the town’s bishop, Ephraim Aden.

Once reconciled with Will, Tom takes over the Silverlode newspaper, and gains the trust of Adenville Mormons whose subscriptions, printing and advertising provide him a means of support. All this is threatened when he meets and falls instantly in love with Tena Neilsen, the 17-year-old daughter of Mormon emigrants from Europe. After a struggle with Tena and her family, Tom wins her heart, marries her in Denver and eventually the pair return to southern Utah with Tom (and Tena) considerably less popular among the saints than they had been previously.

While the novel’s chapters feature diverse tales (there's whole chapters devoted to saloon rowdies, kids’s pranks, family genealogy, gun fights, and dog fights) in essence the rest of Fitzgerald’s novel deals with the growth of Tom and Tena's s multi-religious family in Adenville and their slow but eventual acceptance by the Mormon majority. This subject provides the most powerful writing in the novel, as Fitzgerald portrays the suffering his mother feels, outwardly as a rejected saint, and inwardly as her Mormon conscience tears at her act of rebellion in marrying a gentile.

“Papa knew that Momma’s life was very lonely. The Latter-day Saints politely ignored her because she was an apostate. They would not let her trade in Adenville; even the farmers refused to sell her eggs and vegetables. ... Two weeks before the baby was born, Papa went through a night of torture. Mama had barely spoken to him all evening. About midnight he awoke and heard Mama crying ... He put his arm around her ... Momma threw him off, ‘Don’t touch me,’ she cried piteously.”

When Tom insists that Tena explain her behavior, she admits that she doesn’t feel married to him, since Mormons are married for time and all eternity. Tom goes to Bishop Aden and asks to be baptized a Mormon. The Bishop refuses to baptize Tom to placate his wife, but marries the pair outside a temple for time and all eternity. Although this would be frowned on today, it was not unusual in 18th century Utah to conduct “time and all eternity” marriages from outside a temple or endowment house. But it was certainly unusual if the groom was a Catholic.

Papa Married a Mormon is a fun read for anyone, but also a Utah history lesson. Fitzgerald writes each chapter like a separate story, so readers can jump in anywhere. One weakness is a tendency for the author to be a bit flowery in his prose, so at times romance almost becomes farce. Also, although Fitzgerald's heart is in the right place, he exhibits a condescending attitude toward Native Americans, a vice likely widespread in 1950s literature. One more thing: The novel comes with pictures of all the family members Fitzgerald writes about. It's fun to put a face to Tom, Tena and the Fitzgerald gang.

A postscript: I did some research and discovered that the Fitzgerald lived in Price, Utah, not Southern Utah. “Papa” did marry a Mormon, but he was a local financial professional, not a journalist, and also was an elected official. Author John D. Fitzgerald lived a fascinating life, with many unique jobs. He merits a biography.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardNET.

John D. Fitzgerald is Utah's Mark Twain

There was a brainy, scheming little Mormon capitalist who roiled the early 1900s "town" of Adenville, Utah, with his exploits. The books are The Great Brain series, written by the late John D. Fitzgerald, a roving Gentile reporter/adventurer who spent very little time in Utah after his 18th birthday in 1924, but kept tucked into his mind an endless trove of fond memories.

My son has already eagerly read all The Great Brain books. He even had me dust off an old VHS taping of The Great Brain movie, filmed in Utah in the 1970s and never released to video or DVD. We watched it.

Fitzgerald’s memories, along with a strong talent for writing and a healthy dose of literary license, produced three novels for adults and eight “Great Brain” books for kids. You can buy the novels easily. The books also served as introductions to Mormonism for hundreds of thousands of readers. “The Great Brain” series features Tom D. Fitzgerald, the smartest kid in Adenville, who puts his great brain to work trying to separate cash from the other kids, and many of the adults, in town. The books are narrated by Tom’s younger brother, John, who provides colorful commentary.

Fitzgerald completed and published seven “Great Brain” books. After his death in 1988, a near-complete manuscript for another book was discovered, and it was polished and published several years later. The books, still popular today, and read in schools, were wildly popular in the 1970s.

I recall my fifth-grade teacher reading “The Great Brain at the Academy” to us in Long Beach, Calif. The easy-to-read prose, Fitzgerald’s sense of comic timing, and the morality tale found in each chapter no doubt contributed to the success.

Utah historian Audrey M. Godfrey, in a 1989 essay, “The Promise is Fulfilled: Literary Aspects of John D. Fitzgerald’s Novels,” correctly pegs Fitzgerald as a regional writer, a sort of Utah Mark Twain, who stresses authenticity through characterization and very detailed settings. This is particularly evident in Fitzgerald’s creation of Adenville. Witness this descriptive excerpt from “More Adventures of the Great Brain”: ” … I looked at the trees planted by early Mormon pioneers that lined both sides of Main Street. Adenville was a typical small Mormon town but quite up to date. There were electric light poles all along Main Street and we had telephones. There were wooden sidewalks in front of the stores. Straight ahead I could see the railroad tracks that separated the west side of town from the east side. Across the tracks on the east side were two saloons, the Sheepmen’s Hotel, a rooming house …”

The books are crafted as short stories, strung together to both tell a good tale and teach a lesson. “Every chapter has a moral lesson,” says one Utah teacher I interviewed several years ago (she uses the books in her classes).

Tom’s youthful urges to gain are generally tempered by a serious plot twist requiring charity, or an authority figure that moves the children to a more altruistic stance. Tom’s newspaper editor father often serves this purpose. In one example, he tempers his son’s eagerness – and success – in publishing a competing newspaper by pointing out that most of his “news articles” were in fact gossip designed to hurt subjects and appeal to readers’ baser instincts.

Another moral lesson, appropriate to today’s political climate, involves the persecution a Greek immigrant named Basil receives at the hands of jingoistic townspeople. His persecutors, including the father of a friend of Tom, complain immigrants are taking jobs away from native-born Americans. The chapter ends with the bigotry resolved – at least among the kids – as Tom teaches Basil how to assimilate. True to his character, the Great Brain tries to profit from the endeavor.

Godfrey, in an interview, says the moral lessons in Fitzgerald’s tales were likely influenced by the good feelings he experienced toward the Latter-day Saints growing up as a gentile in Utah. A consistent virtuous character in Fitzgerald’s works is Bishop Ephraim Aden, the tolerant, gentle, elderly leader of Fitzgerald’s Adenville.

However, the ecumenism prevalent in Fitzgerald’s works may owe more to his idealized, fond memories of growing up in Utah than to reality. Price, Utah, where he lived, perhaps was a less tense place for Mormons and non-Mormons than Southern Utah, the setting of his novels. The guilt and secrecy, of, for example, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, is not found in Fitzgerald’s novels.

“He had good feelings towards Mormons,” says Godfrey. Bishop Aden, she adds, is representative of the larger role a bishop assumed in a Utah community 100-plus years ago. “In a small town there was a lot more give and take” between Mormon and non-Mormons,” she says.

The accidental series The “Great Brain” series came about almost by accident. One night Fitzgerald and his wife were entertaining friends for dinner. Fitzgerald’s fiction writing career had peaked after the publications of “Papa Married a Mormon,” “Mama’s Boarding House” and “Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse.” The author recounted some long-ago tales about his older brother, Tom. The guests loved the stories so much that Fitzgerald was motivated to write his first “Great Brain book.

The series, published by Dell, offered a second literary career for Fitzgerald and likely provided him and his wife Joan a comfortable retirement. The writer Fitzgerald enjoyed an adventurous life through most of the past century. He left Utah at 18 to try his hand at being a jazz drummer. Early in his career, he was a pulp fiction writer and likely authored more than 100 lowbrow novels and short stories. If any survive that describe “Adenville” or his Utah youth, they have not surfaced.

He worked as a staff writer for the New York World-Tribune and labored on the foreign desk for the United Press wire service. He was also a bank auditor and even tried his hand at politics, working on the staff of Republican Wendell Wilkie’s failed 1940 presidential campaign. He conceived the idea for “Papa Married a Mormon” while working as a steel purchasing agent in California in the 1950s.

His sister Isobelle, although not listed on the title, was active in the novel’s creation. Fitzgerald’s novels, including the “Great Brain” series, were inspired by his mother, who asked him to one day write about “the little people” who founded the West, bankers, laborers, mother, merchants, newspapermen, the clergy, etc.

Besides his better-known works, Fitzgerald wrote two other children’s novels and a book on how to craft a novel. He freelanced extensively, contributing more than 500 articles. “To thousands of youthful readers in the United States, England, and Germany he is a well known author. The Great Brain’s character in Fitzgerald’s series for children is as familiar as Tom Sawyer to these young people,” wrote Godfrey in her 1989 essay.

Despite his literary achievement, much of Fitzgerald’s life remains a mystery. Besides Godfrey’s essay, there is little independent research on Fitzgerald. In fact, his death in 1988 was barely mentioned by Utah media.

Perhaps Fitzgerald encouraged the secrecy. His books are crafted as if they include real places and real people. In “Papa Married a Mormon,” there are even photos of the main characters. Yet, while many of the tales related may have occurred in part and characters existed, the books are clearly fiction. There is no Adenville. Papa Fitzgerald is not a newspaper editor. There was no Jesuit academy in Salt Lake City 100 years ago (the setting of “The Great Brain at the Academy”).

This literary license has led to confusion. Some libraries have placed “Papa Married a Mormon” in the biography section. There was once a Web site devoted to trying to locate the “Southern Utah locations” of “The Great Brain” novels. On a personal note, I spent a long afternoon as a young teen dragging my parents through back roads of Southern Utah searching for the non-existent ruins of Adenville.

A perusal through long-filed away records in Carbon County and Price, Utah, unveil some of the mystery of the writer Fitzgerald’s life. Most of the characters existed. Most are interred in Carbon County.

The “Great Brain” himself, brother Tom Fitzgerald Jr., lived his entire life in Price. He died in 1988, the same year as his writer brother. By the way, the Great Brain was not a Mormon, but a lifelong Catholic. Tragedy dogged the real-life “Great Brain.” In 1925 his young wife Fern died while pregnant and their daughter was stillborn. Fitzgerald’s father, Tom Fitzgerald Sr., was a well-known businessman who served as a Price City councilman. At his funeral, future Utah Gov. J. Bracken Lee was one of the pallbearers.

Fitzgerald’s mother was a Mormon who married a Catholic – that much is true. Her name was Minnie, not Tena, her name in the novels.

There is still much more to unearth in Carbon County and other areas should a biographer one day tackle John D. Fitzgerald’s unique life. It has been two decades since historian Godfrey wrote her essay on John D. Fitzgerald. His “Great Brain” series is still in print, and remains popular to enough readers to keep it circulated. Nevertheless, “Harry Potter,” “Twilight” and other series are read today in far greater numbers than “The Great Brain” was read even during its most-popular era.

“(Most) kids don’t even know about it. They are into more modern subjects, like fantasy, escapism,” says Godfrey.

The Great Brain has proven to be immortal, and perhaps more importantly, he has managed to turn a tidy profit for The Fitzgerald family for half a century.

A postcript: For Mormon-themed cinema, the Great Brain seems ideal for adaptation. Although few know this, it was made into a film in 1978 and starred Jimmy Osmond! On Osmond’s Web site are stills from the film. It's never had a DVD release, or VHS, but I own a personally taped copy from about 1980 (TV). You can now access it at YouTube, various locations. Here's one link.

-- Doug Gibson

doug1963@gmail.com

Note: A version of this post was published in the Standard-Examiner newspaper in 2009. This column is also published at StandardBlogs.