“A Grain of Mustard Seed” Maurine Whipple and the Spanish Flu

One in a series of introductions of pieces from A Craving For Beauty: The Collected Writings of Maurine Whipple (BCC Press, 2020).

"A Grain of Mustard Seed"

Whipple set this short story in Salt Lake City in Winter 1918, during the Spanish Influenza pandemic. It tells of a dying young woman and her husband’s priesthood blessing which brings her back to health. The story, written in 1943, is perhaps Whipple’s most positive towards LDS faith, featuring the young man’s thoughts upon returning from a 3-year mission, a fairly detailed but reverent description of their marriage in the SLC Temple (despite Whipple not having been endowed at that point), his fear of losing her, and the blessing, performed by the husband and his former missionary companions, stretching their arms through the window of the hospital they were not allowed to enter.

(Photos of a BYU lecture hall, Utah newspapers, and the Millennial Star during the 1918-1919 pandemic)