did it discount the contribution Mormonism had made in grappling
with the questions of the age. Instead, it treated the Mormon ideology
as a chapter in the larger human story. In my account, history did not
set Mormons apart from the rest of the human family; it bound them
to it.
I sent Dr. Runciman the draft, and a few days later we met in his
office. He sat across from me and, with a look of astonishment, said it
was good. “Some parts of it are very good,” he said. He was smiling
now. “I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t earn a doctorate.”
As I walked home carrying the heavy manuscript, I remembered
attending one of Dr. Kerry’s lectures, which he had begun by writing,
“Who writes history?” on the blackboard. I remembered how strange
the question had seemed to me then. My idea of a historian was not
human; it was of someone like my father, more prophet than man,
whose visions of the past, like those of the future, could not be
questioned, or even augmented. Now, as I passed through King’s
College, in the shadow of the enormous chapel, my old diffidence
seemed almost funny. Who writes history? I thought. I do.
—ON MY TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY, the birthday I had chosen, I submitted
my PhD dissertation. The defense took place in December, in a small,
simply furnished room. I passed and returned to London, where Drew
had a job and we’d rented a flat. In January, nearly ten years to the day
since I’d set foot in my first classroom at BYU, I received confirmation
from the University of Cambridge: I was Dr. Westover.
I had built a new life, and it was a happy one, but I felt a sense of loss
that went beyond family. I had lost Buck’s Peak, not by leaving but by
leaving silently. I had retreated, fled across an ocean and allowed my
father to tell my story for me, to define me to everyone I had ever
known. I had conceded too much ground—not just the mountain, but
the entire province of our shared history.
It was time to go home.