The Emma Trilogy
Doug’s Dilemma
Escape to Zion
Author: Chad Daybell
Publisher: Bonneville Books (imprint of Cedar Fort)
When the box of books came, I pulled out the first book in the Emma trilogy. I had a busy day ahead, but I was due for a short break, so I thought I’d just look at a few pages to see what they were like. Hours later I was still reading. Over the next several days, I burnt the bread, forgot to make dinner and generally neglected my family. I stopped reading only to fulfill the numerous church assignments I had that week. These were easily the three best books I have ever read! The LDS world seems to be in agreement. They were named LDS classics in an article on Meridian Magazine by Richard H. Cracroft, a distinguished BYU professor.
The Emma trilogy follows Emma in two books and her brother Doug in the center book through perilous time travel journeys on errands for the Lord. Combining solid LDS doctrine and well-researched history with heart-capturing adventures, the trilogy transports the reader to exciting places in the past and future.
The first book, An Errand for Emma, sends 18 year old Emma on her first journey. Emma is a bit of a klutz, tripping with fascinating results. In this instance, the blow to her head sends her off on her first errand, to the time of Brigham Young. She lands in Provo just as President Young is arriving. He rescues her and reveals to her the purpose of her journey. The trip involves her ancestors, and the need to gather vital information that will not be available to her in her own time. This mission sends her to Denver, Colorado, offering a little-seen look at the end of the gold rush. Denver is not a nice place at this time, and her own life is in serious danger as she tracks down the only person who can tell her what she needs to know. The trip takes on extra complications when she falls in love with a man from the past. An interesting sidelight to the plot is that these ancestors, and the ancestor portrayed in the second book, are actually the ancestors of the author, Chad Daybell. The stories are a fascinating blend of fact and fiction, and by visiting his website, you will be able to gain a behind-the-scenes look at the characters in the story. Emma’s modern-day family has its basis in Brother Daybell’s family.
The second book follows Emma’s younger brother Doug. He has become a local celebrity as a star athlete. He puts this on hold to serve a Spanish-speaking mission near New York, where the author served his own mission. The early parts of this book include an enlightening look at a very challenging mission assignment, but those challenges are nothing compared to what is about to come. Nothing surprises him more than to discover that time travel runs in the family, and he is sent on his own errand for the Lord, taken right from his mission when he falls from a bridge toward a huge truck. He is taken back in time to World War II, where he meets Ezra Taft Benson and is sent by the general authority to join the military. There he is placed in the same company as his future great-grandfather, Keith Dalton. He soon understands that he is to keep his ancestor alive through battle and then through a prisoner of war camp in Germany. The challenges of keeping his ancestor alive make it difficult for him to stay alive. How will the future be altered if he dies before he is even born? The depictions of this time and place in the war are carefully researched and accurately portrayed. Just as great as the challenge of surviving the war is the challenge, after returning to his own time, of escaping a mentally ill doctor who wants to know why Doug thinks he has escaped from a World War II camp.
The third book in the series had a tremendous impact on me. In turn frightening and inspiring, we follow Emma, recently married, to the last days. She finds herself in a Salt Lake City that fulfills prophecies that this city will be very wicked in the final days before the Second Coming. Brother Daybell has researched the prophecies extensively and the resources used can be found detailed on his web site. Emma is sent to rescue her brother Doug’s two children from an evil group, centered at Brigham Young University (which is no longer functioning), that recruits teenagers to violate every known value they have been taught. The task might cost her her own virtue.
Once rescued, Emma must get these children to their parents in New Jerusalem. When she arrives, she encounters a slightly overwhelming problem. She cannot co-exist with the Emma who is present at the time she is now visiting, so her middle-aged self is gone, and she steps into a marriage complete with her children who were not even born when she fell forward in time, and a husband who is much older, all of whom know she is on a time travel mission. But what happens while she is there will change her life forever!
The depictions of evil were extremely frightening, and filled me with an overwhelming desire to both repent, and to buy food storage. But the glimpse into New Jerusalem were uplifting and exciting. Many of us wonder what life will be like there, and Brother Daybell has created a vision that I hope will be just the way it is. This book was so powerful and thought-provoking that I was unable to write the review until I had stepped back from the books for a time. It is a story that will inspire you to become the person you want to be and to think carefully about the choices you make in the last days.