A Disciple's Life: The Biography of Neal A. Maxwell by Bruce Hafen

Virtually every book that one might find in a Church bookstore will cause one of the following for me: shuddering, wincing, or eye rolling. The exception is the category of LDS biographies. In general, I love them. (In fact, I think we need more of them: some of the prophets of this dispensation are missing decent biographies.) So I was eager to read this one, and it did, in fact, have the predicted effect: I gained a real appreciation for Elder Maxwell, and I felt the Spirit testify to reality of his calling as an apostle. I also appreciated, as Hafen mentions in the introduction, that this is not hagiography. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to find out that when Elder Maxwell shifted from working at the U of U to the Church, he had to give up his habit of mildly cussing (as Hafen puts it) at rebellious mechanical devices. Knowing this gives me hope that I can eventually overcome my own peccadilloes (which is what we call sins when we don't want to admit their seriousness). I also realized that I had quite a bit in common with Elder Maxwell, from a love of books, to a struggle with developing patience.

That said, there are a few flaws here. The book gets a little flabby as soon as Elder Maxwell becomes an apostle. I think the problem is that Hafen thought he needed to give the reader a lot of background about the current policies and situation of the Church so we could better appreciate the changes that Elder Maxwell saw. While this information was interesting, I occasionally forgot that I was reading a bio of Elder Maxwell; it felt like a modern Church history without a particular focus. And it didn't seem to be particularly chronological, either (although so little reference to Elder Maxwell was made that I can't be entirely sure of that). Also, I think Hafen comes off, in his chapter on Elder Maxwell's books, as unnecessarily harsh. I've only read maybe 2-3 of Elder Maxwell's books, but I liked them.

But these are minor issues. Overall, I loved this book and would recommend it.