Susan Ertz (McCrindle), 1894-1985, was an American-born English novelist already popular and familiar to American as well as British audiences through half a dozen prior novels, when she published The Proselyte in 1933.

The Proselyte follows English convert Zillah Purdy and her husband Joseph Hewett through Zillah’s conversion, their emigration to Zion by ship and handcart, and their early years as a happy and determinedly monogamous couple. But they cannot hold out against “compulsory polygamy,” doncha know, and the Danites make a bloody appearance, and … well, you’ve read all that before. The Proselyte is far better written than most, and the interior lives of Zillah and Joseph are as important to the novel as the plot. The author clearly has great affection and respect for the Mormon people, at least to her imagined version of the Mormon people. For all its inaccuracies, the book is not mean-spirited. It is not “anti-Mormon” in the sense that Michael Austin outlines here

Apostle John A. Widtsoe knew Susan Ertz and tried to guide her to a more authentic portrayal before the book was published. Still, he wrote, “Miss Ertz did not have in her heart to do any harm to the Mormon people. On the contrary, she tried to be fair and to give them the benefit of the doubt. Considering the mass of vicious anti-Mormon literature which was supplied her, it is really marvelous that the book is as correct as it is.” Levi Edgar Young, one of the presidents of the Seventy, likewise was generous in his evaluation: “Miss Ertz has written a great novel based on the trek of the Mormon pioneers to the far West. In her story the hardships and sorrows of the people are clearly portrayed; and she tells of the great truths of colonizing the West, and pays high tribute to the pioneers of this State.” (( Hat tip to Kent Larsen for finding this quotation in a talk given by Elder Young at General Conference in 1933. ))

President Heber J. Grant also read the novel. “It just makes me sad,” he said. “The style of the book is altogether too much in that of the dime novel, written undoubtedly to sell. I believe that she intended to do the fair thing by our people, but she has made many very serious mistakes, in my judgment.”

One of those mistakes, he pointed out, was the account of the gift of tongues given early in the novel, when heroine Zillah Purdy attended a Mormon meeting conducted by Elder Hewett. At the end of the service, after the closing prayer, this happens:

A woman not many seats away burst out into wild, incoherent speech. The audience started, as if an electric current had been passed through them all, and turned and craned their heads. Excitement, pleasure, curiosity, and a kind of shame showed in their faces. They wanted to look their fill at this woman who so strangely disturbed the silence that followed the prayer, and they were at the same time embarrassed and ashamed to be listening to anything so nakedly emotional.

“Eli, elo; mela bali!” she cried, in a high, thin, unnatural voice. Her arms were stretched rigidly above her head, she was trembling violently, and her voice mounted to a scream that shocked the very air. “Elo elo elo! bali bali! mela bali, mela bali! I hear a sound overhead, like the rustling of silken robes! The Spirit of God is near! Christ is coming! Christ is coming to save the righteous and to dwell on earth with them for a thousand years! The time is near, the time is upon us! Repent, brothers and sisters, and be gathered to Zion! Repent or you will be lost, lost in eternity! Believe and repent, and you will be saved in glory, in glory, for ever and ever! Eli, elo ela! mela bata, mela bata! Save us, O Christ! Save us!”

Her thin, wailing, eerie voice, the only sound in the dim hall, sent shivers up many a spine …

Mr. Jevons turned his excited, fanatical face towards them, and leaned across the shrinking Zillah.

“Did ye hear that?” he asked, his eyes blazing with pride and enthusiasm. “Did ye hear that? The woman spoke in tongues. ‘Twas the true language of Adam. It’s well ye came to-night, friends.”

A little crowd gathered closely about the woman, who was now sobbing. Elder Hewett stepped calmly down from the platform, a glass of water in his hand, and went to her, and the group divided. Soon she was calm and quiet and, the crowd dispersing, she resumed her seat, smiling weakly and wiping the tears from her cheeks. A neighbour adjusted her shawl for her and straightened her bonnet. The meeting then broke up, and people gathered, talking, into other groups, or moved about from one to another.

“Her reference to the talking in tongues leads one to believe that this gift is only some gibberish from a fanatical woman,” said President Grant.

And then, to contrast this cheap sideshow depiction of the gift of tongues, President Grant told of two experiences of his own. First:

I have heard the gift of tongues perhaps only half a dozen times in all my life. One of those times was when my own wife exercised the gift at one o’clock in the morning when I came home ruined financially, looking at it naturally, being in debt more than one hundred thousand dollars above the value of her securities that I owned, and she was sitting up waiting to talk to me and to condemn my working so hard. She started to give me what would be called a “Caudle Lecture” only to stop and then to break forth in the gift of tongues, and I knew she was blessing me, although I did not understand a word, but sat there and wept for joy. When she had finished I asked her if she had the interpretation. She said, “No.” I told her I did not. We knelt down and prayed for the interpretation, and the interpretation was that it was displeasing in the sight of the Lord for me to work so hard, that I was to go about my business in an orderly manner, and that I would live to pay all of my obligations. his promise was fulfilled. I lived to pay not only all of my obligations, but at high rates of interest without asking a discount from any one.

And second:

Mother often told me when I was a boy that I would be an Apostle if I would behave myself, and I laughed at her, telling her that every mother thought her son would be an Apostle or the President of the United States. I told her to get it out of her head, that I had no ambition to occupy any position in the Church; I wanted to be a business man. When I was made an Apostle she then told me why she had often said that I would be one, and referred to this gift of tongues. I told her I remembered Aunt Zina Young lifting her hand and saying that I would be a great big man; and I often thought after I grew tall that perhaps it was remarkable that she should have promised it. Mother said: “She did not say anything of the kind; she said you would be a great big man in the Church and become an Apostle.”

“I wish to say that I am sure that Miss Ertz did not intend to do any injustice to our people, and that her book is way ahead and far beyond anything that has been written in the nature of a novel about our people,” President Grant concluded. “I feel grateful to her for having written her book; however, I could not help but recall the days when I read dime novels as a child in school.”

And I’m grateful to Susan Ertz for having written The Proselyte, if only for having called forth these reminiscences by President Grant.