Alvin Maker

I am almost through reading Card's first book in the Alvin Maker series. In my last post I suggest that I might be more craftsman than artist. I like building stuff, putting things together, mending things, I cringe under the epitaph "everybody needs a (my name)", so now I am wondering if there is a bit of "maker" in me. Mind you, only about as much maker as Uncle Andrew was a true magician.

The Alvin Maker world is overtly laced with "folk magic". I am OK with this as fiction but it looks a bit too much like Card is proselyting Mormonism. In her excellent dissertation Alma Jean Porschet goes so far as to say "without Joseph Smith there could be no Seventh Son". She sees Alvin as a representation of Smith and identifies things that happen in the novels as suggestive of Mormon history and doctrines. Which begs the question - by continuing to read will I end up wanting to become a Mormon?