Many of you know I started Patten because of a spiritual experience. I knew from the beginning that writing it was one of the missions of my life. The research took ten years. The writing took eighteen months.

The book How to Write: Advice and Reflections by Richard Rhodes, influenced me a great deal. Rhodes thinks taking notes in libraries is stupid. He advocates copying sections of books where there might be material and then doing the careful analysis at home.

The Research

When I first began, two men I barely knew who owned different expensive LDS historical CD databases offered to download information on Patten onto disks for me. I took these disks and printed out more than fifty pages, then listed every book and manuscript that cited Patten.

Over the months and years, I brought each of these books to Phoenix through interlibrary loans and copied all the sections where he appeared. The footnotes of these books cited other sources, so I made a new list and sent for more books. This process seemed never-ending.

I also made a list of all manuscripts mentioned and checked online to see if they were in Brigham Young University's Special Collections. Using Rhodes' theory, when at last I went to BYU, rather than reading the manuscripts, I hurriedly flipped through them, found the years 1832-1838, and copied all those pages.

One day, I remember, the copying bill was $55! Eek!

Going carefully through all these journals back at home took months. I had to make three more trips to Salt Lake City to visit the Church Historian's Office since they don't allow any of their materials to be copied. I wrote Patten's missionary journal out in long hand, though it took most of a week! But at least they gave me access to the records and let me buy more than twenty copies of photographs for use in the book.

A number of miracles occurred during this time. One was that Elder Nathan Patten, a direct descendant of David's brother, John Patten, was sent to my ward as a missionary. He put me in contact with a branch of the Patten family who led me to other important sources.

The Writing

Wow! The writing was tough. I would lay out all the copied pages from journals and book sections (six to ten versions of each event, on average) and read them each over and over. I had to think about my approach to the event, and decide what was true and what was false in the sources. Then I would write my version, using details from all the various sources and attributing each line or paragraph or section to the correct source.

Finally, I would rewrite, rewrite and rewrite some more, trying to make it read like a novel.

I was blessed by the wonderful help of the women on the anwa-critique line, and Terry Montague in particular.

At an October ANWA Conference, LDS editor Valerie Holladay read the first three chapters of Patten and, much to my amazement, said she wanted to help me find a publisher. A year later I finished the book and she took it to Cedar Fort, where it was accepted.

In short, I believe that God wanted this book written and published. He opened the way time and again to make it happen. I am grateful I got to be a part of it.

David W. Patten, Apostle and Martyr is available at all LDS bookstores and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The web site Linda "shares" with the early apostle is www.davidwpatten.com.