Miles Harvey didnt set out to write a Mormon story when he started researching James Jesse Strang, the self-proclaimed king of earth and heavenand Beaver Island.

I didnt see him as a weird Midwestern story or (Mormon) story. I saw him as a lightning rod for all the enthusiasm, prejudices, activities of that era, Harvey says.

That era, the mid-1800s, was an era of change, upheaval and uncertainty. Sound familiar?

I dont know if I would have written the same book if I hadnt been living through the Trump era. But conversely, Strang helped me understand Trump. It helped me think through Trump, Harvey says.

Guys like (Strang) thrive in times of massive change when people want simple and hopeful answers to complex and depressing questions. He offered those things. A lot of his followers were the losers of the upheavals of the 19th century, people who had lost out economically, demographically. He told them they could be the people who ushered in the second coming of God. He offered a kind of new Jerusalem. It must have been really seductive.

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Harvey still isnt sure whether Strang was a true believer of what he preached, especially because Strang had written extensively about his own atheism prior to joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS).

We know a lot about Strangs beliefs from before Mormonism. He was an atheist. He told a reporter he was an atheist when he walked into Nauvoo (a Mormon settlement). He was well-versed in the Bible so he could talk a good game and if I was a believer at that time, with his King James-style writing thee and thou it would have taken me in.

And, while Miles Harvey is not a Mormon, he is not about to dismiss anyones faith.

I dont question anyones faith because I have it myself. I dont want anyone telling me Im silly so Im not going to tell anyone else theyre silly, Harvey says.

But The King of Confidence is not about LDS faith or even LDS history.

I was much less interested in Strang as part of Mormon history as such as a part of American history.

And he was fascinated by the eras confidence men.

Con man came into usage in 1849 in New York newspaperand spread rapidly. It was a time when confidence was a currency. It was a time of such dramatic change. You couldnt trust anything except your confidence in someone. Confidence Man. Confidence Artist. There was even a play three months after the word came into usage.

Harveys research took him deep into old newspapers, genealogy and collections, including an impressive one at Central Michigan University.

Strang and his people were savers, probably because they thought they were ushering in the Second Coming, Harvey says. There are two great archives, one at Yale because his first biographer, Milo Quaife, gave his papers to Yale. CMU also has a great collection. Another thing is the 19th-centurynewspaper databases. I was able to discover some stuff about Strang sitting in my underwear in my basement at 1 a.m. Some of the stuff was counterintuitive. If you were only looking in only Michigan newspapers, you would have missed stuff.

Harvey only made one trip to Beaver Island when he was researching The King of Confidence. He said Strangs legacy can be seen widely in place names, including the islands village, St. James, and the main road, Kings Highway.

He also fell in love with The Book of Mormon, the sacred text of the LDS church. Its an amazing literary document, he says. Im an English teacher, so thats where Im coming from. To reimagine the Bible as an ongoing story and set it in North America takes some imagination.

Harvey teaches at DePaul University.

Guest host for An Evening with Miles Harvey is Jeremiah Chamberlin, a University of Michigan instructor, contributing editor at Poets and Writersand editor-in-chief ofFiction Writers Review.

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New Book Tells the Story of Beaver Island's King Strang - MyNorth.com