By Ryan McIlvain
Called ?the consummate Renaissance woman,? LDS writer Jaroldeen Edwards told students at Friday?s English Lecture Series to cultivate a love of language.
?Within the walls of my home, words were the air that we breathed,? Edwards said. ?We breathed words, we ate words, we talked words. We were as a family, in a word, word-struck.?
Edwards, who is author of 11 books and mother of 12 children, read from a prize-winning essay on the balancing act of motherhood.
She said the essay was a reminder for women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to cherish their sacred roles as wives and mothers.
?Here am I, Lord, the dishes barely done and the night long since fallen,? she read. ?The children would not go to bed, and would not go, and would not go, and now, they?ve gone, gone to places of their own and children of their own, who will not go to bed, and will not go.?
The Canadian-born author also read excerpts from several of her novels, which, in Steinbeck-esque fashion, trace the generational progress of a particular family.
She read from ?Wildflower,? a coming-of-age novel about a young woman in Canada and her best seller to date.
Demonstrating her talent for setting and narrative, Edwards told the story of Catherine, who left home to find her place in the world, reading in the calm, didactic voice that only a mother of 12?and a grandmother of 74?can master.
?The book flew off the shelves,? Edwards said, attributing the novel?s success to its compelling story, which also filled a literary niche, and ?a very sexy cover,? which she had to tear off her own copy.
Edwards, who served as an LDS senior missionary in South Africa, also read excerpts from her first and only foray into LDS fiction.
She tried to write a generational novel about what it was like to be Mormon, without sounding preachy or contrived, she said.
After reading the finished draft, Edwards? editor said, ?That is the finest book I?ve ever edited.? Edwards was relieved to hear such high praise for her novel, she said, especially since it dealt with sensitive subjects like polygamy. But she was still anxious about how church members would receive it.
When her editor asked her why she was concerned, Edwards told her, ?Well, you do know I?m a Mormon, don?t you?? The editor shook her head.
?I thought, ?Yes, I did it,?? Edwards said. ??I wrote a Mormon book that didn?t sound like a Mormon wrote it.??
Edwards, who is now working on another book, proudly calls herself an amateur, even after so many years of writing successful novels.
?I?m still an amateur engaged in the love of language,? she said. ?There isn?t a day that goes by that I don?t rejoice in a sentence.'