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Just Judy is a retired business professional who continues to be fascinated with other people’s lives, history , and good tales. She continues to write. Currently, she resides in Farmers Branch, Texas.

It is 1822 in Upstate, New York when Mason Chase hires a crew of local farm hands to dig a well on his property. At the bottom of the well, a stone is found and we quickly find young Joseph Smith using this stone to find treasures said to be hidden below the earth. His new found fame as a necromancer leads to a legal trial where he is charged with deceiving people through the use of his stone. As maturity sets in, visions of treasures are set aside for visions of heavenly messengers and a new religion is born. Shortly after the publication of the Book of Mormon, elders are sent out to spread the word of this new religion and the kingdom experiences rapid growth. From his early days as a money-digger to his final days as a martyred prophet, the life of Joseph Smith is a mixture of adoration and apostasy from his people, blended with the ever present friction brought on by suspicion and mistrust from those he called gentiles–non-believers.

Joseph Smith was a colorful and dramatic person, charismatic and easy to love. But, like a double edged sword or a two-sided coin, the story tells of a man who had a talent for getting on peoples’ nerves. It was those other people who called him Holy Joe. Everyone who read the newspapers of the day, and those with him in the midst of the action, knew the prophet had this other name. Today, this name grabs attention and speaks to a multifaceted personality: ‘prophet, seer, and revelator, yes. He was also known as Holy Joe.