No Man Knows My History by Fawn M. Brodie

In winter, the house was so cold the kitchen was the preferred room.īringhurst describes a young teenage Fawn as a pious, believing Mormon who bore her testimony in church, taught Sunday school and was engaged to a returned missionary. As a child, Fawn and the other family members used an outhouse (“Mrs. An example cited by Bringhurst of the domination Fawn witnessed as a child was the refusal by the five strong siblings to allow Thomas and his large family to use more than two bedrooms or even install plumbing in the home. As Bringhurst notes in his biography, Brodie grew up as part of LDS royalty but also in “genteel poverty.” Her father was not an assertive man, and allowed his brother David and four sisters to control the McKay family affairs, even as Thomas was dealing with a crushing family mortgage. Her mother Fawn Brimhall McKay, was the daughter of Brigham Young University president Richard W. Her father, Thomas McKay, was a brother of the Mormon apostle and prophet David O. It’s a sympathetic, but not sycophantic, biography that was a very interesting read, particularly if one’s only knowledge of McKay Brodie is as the “heretic” who wrote “No Man Knows My History.” She accomplished much more.īrodie grew up in the now-iconic McKay family home in Huntsville. Published 15 years ago, it’s a relatively short work and can be read over a weekend. This past weekend, thanks to my friend Cal Grondahl, I had the opportunity to read “Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life,” by Newell G. (Even today, I’m sure my previous sentence will invite controversy.) In fact, it took 60 years for another biography of Smith, Richard Lyman Bushman’s “Rough Stone Rolling,” to supplant Brodie’s book as the finest account of Smith’s life.

The biography angered and stung Mormon leaders, and led to a formal excommunication of Brodie from the church, although she had ceased activity in it several years earlier.Īlmost 70 years later, Brodie’s biography of Smith remains highly regarded. “No Man Knows My History” was the first biography of Smith that wasn’t either a hagiography or a cumbersome anti-Mormon hatchet job. The biography tagged Mormon’s most-revered latter-day leader as essentially a fraud.

It’s pretty safe to say that there is no one left who witnessed the extremely intelligent Huntsville youngster who moved through college in her mid-teens and was teaching English at Weber College by age 19.Įven today, there’s precious little neutrality among Mormons over Fawn McKay, who later, as Fawn Brodie, published “No Man Knows My History,” a biography of the Mormon church founder Joseph Smith.

Next year, it’ll be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fawn McKay in Weber County.

No Man Knows My History by Fawn M. Brodie