Chapter One

1881

Petter Arontsen was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [Mormons] on June 12, 1881 for the most grievous of sins—apostasy. It was his fiftieth birthday, and he never forgot the insult and humiliation inflicted on him by the LDS Prophet. To rub salt in Petter’s wound, his excommunication was announced in the church’s newspaper, the Deseret News, on the day of Petter’s fiftieth birthday. Petter lost most of his friends—all of whom were Mormons. At least as important to him was that he also lost most of his business opportunities. His family—four wives and eighteen children—was disillusioned, regarding his expulsion from the church as grossly unfair. They were glad to leave “Zion” and try another place and another life.

The other place was easy. In fact, they moved about following Petter’s work opportunities as master mason. He was successful and became anxious to start his own business in a permanent location. That location was an odd one, as it turned out. The family settled in the very middle of Wyoming in a hamlet called Iron Heart in reference to the train locomotives that received scheduled maintenance there. The presence of the trains provided the opportunity Petter needed to make his name and fortune. Iron Heart was located in the center of a shallow depression in the desert floor surrounded by low granite mountains. Petter and his sons established a quarry and attracted highly skilled quarriers. He shipped precisely cut granite blocks around the country and frequently provided master and journeymen masons to supervise the planning and construction of buildings in every major city in America and Lower Canada. By 1910, Petter no longer wielded a hammer and chisel. He made his millions with a pencil and a telegraph.

Iron Heart would have remained a hamlet housing skilled quarriers, masons, shippers, salesmen, and accountants were it not for the burning need Petter Arontsen had to enlarge the religious universe of those around him. In 1888, he actually purchased the town—lock, stock, and barrel. He became the mayor, primary employer, greatest benefactor, and eventually, the city’s major religious figure—almost the only one. He groomed his eleven sons to follow his lead, and together they began to attract followers to Iron Heart—not for work—but to join Arontsen’s innovative church that he named—with a modicum of immodesty—The Only True Church of Christ.

Being the home of a church with such a provocative name surely needed the city to change with the times and circumstances. The mayor and the city council—consisting of four of his sons, two daughters, and two sons-in-law, who were all also prominent in the church—voted unanimously to change Iron Heart to The Heart of Eden. By 1900, there was a serious draw from America and soon thereafter from Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand to The Heart of Eden. Prophet Petter Arontsen—as he became affectionately known—developed a proselytizing network par excellence. The advantages of The Only True Church were many and were extremely appealing: earthly wealth afforded by lucrative work in a well-established industry, polygamy that attracted rich men who could afford to take wives from among the many nubile girls in The Heart of Eden and from around the world, whose passage and promise of a good life was assured by the simple expedient of joining the wealthy congregation.

By the time the Prophet Petter died in 1932, there were 200,000 citizens/members in The Heart of Eden with an average income of $83,000 for a family of four—a small family—and $142,000 for a family of fourteen—more nearly the average. By the standards of the time—the depths of the Great Depression—that was princely. He was wise in almost every respect by maintaining control of almost all aspects of his and his family’s lives and the lives of his congregants. He established a hierarchal order that assured a smooth succession in leadership of the church, the city, and the burgeoning businesses based on nepotism.

The Prophet hit upon another highly effective way to ensure tranquility and contentment among the members. The church and the city passed laws that required every member to divest himself and his family of all holdings in return for a guaranteed cradle-to-grave comfortable life. That was highly appealing to the people living on the brink of disaster during the Depression. The other element of control which guaranteed social contentment was that all marriages were controlled by a central “Sacred Marriage Bureau.” Members trained in sociology and psychology investigated the compatibility of marital arrangements and granted licenses to those of a marriageable age and with an appropriate work ethic. The system worked, much as society works in Scandinavia—no one stood out; everyone was average; and there was no need for contention and rivalry for jobs or to find a suitable mate.

The next four presidents of the church were selected by the Council of the Prophets—six men handpicked by the president, who were of irreproachable moral character and proven financial ability and stability—all of whom were sons of Petter Arontsen. The next three were grandsons of the founding Prophet. All of the presidents were excellent husbandmen of the large fortune they inherited. Each man was richer than the last; and by 2013, Prophet/President Erasmus Jessen—the first man not directly related to the Arontsen family—had an estate that made him a double billionaire. His three predecessors were also fine managers and were able to pass on an increase of more than a billion dollars.

The liberal policies of The Only True Church adapted with the times and were inclusive rather than exclusive. It was more than social liberalism; it was financially practical because the church attracted people with money who were of both genders, all races, and all sexual persuasions. Some of the less pious sang irreverent songs of praise for the church and its Prophet—the favorite being, “Oh, how the money rolls in, rolls in; oh, how the money rolls in.”

It was not until the fall of 2013 that the first fissures began to appear in the idyllic church, town, industry, and social structure in the form of a whistle blower named Devon Carlisle.