Angel of the Danube by Alan Rex Mitchell, Charissa Yang Sullivan (Illustrator)

Angel of the Danubeby Anonymous

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October 06, 2000: Angel is an unusual, often startling but wonderfully refreshing Mormon Missionary novel. Angel, which promises to be to Mormon missionary fiction what God's Army is to the Mormon missionary film, is a moving and comical account of a young man's successful search for spiritual wholeness amidst an (Austrian)world of rejection. Tracking Elder Barry Monroe's spiritual odyssey throu the Austria Vienna Missiona is something like tracking Huckleberry Finn's discovery of his and Jim's humanhood, and even more like following Henderson on his comic journey into the heart of Africa in Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King. In fact, in Alan Mitchell we may have discovered our Mormon Saul Bellow. Writing his missionary journal in California-hip dialect (Mark Twain did it almost as well in Huck Finn), Elder Monroe, who calls everyone 'Dude,' is wacky and comical and essentially serious as he stands atop his bedrock Mormonness and calls the nonplused Austrians to repentance. Writing from what is obviously his won sound faith in the power of the gospel to change and improve lives, Mitchell has hung a rich and literaily satisfying coming-of-age novel upon an infrastructre of Austrian folklore and the ups-and-downs of Moron missionary life. The result is a landmark novel unique in Mormon fiction that will delight everyone-except perhaps, the Church Missionary Committee (Angel of the Danube will not become a supplement ot the whitel Missionary Handbook). The rest of us will enjoy this fresh, original, thoroughgoingly Mormon, albeit wonderfully unorthodox treatment of the First Principles' pattern of the journey to belief. Hurrah for Alan Mitchell's rich contribution to Mormon letters and positive and affirming answer to the question: 'What else is left to be said, in fiction, about the life of a Mormon missionary!'