After Forty Books, She Knows Why the Book of Mormon Could Not Be Faked

The manuscript landed on her father's desk in a stack thick enough to prop a door. For years he had nudged her to write a book, and for years she had told him a book was simply too big. Now here it was. She handed it over with something close to a dare: here is the book you always asked for, so please, do not ask again.

That writer was Sian Ann Bessey, today a USA Today bestselling author and a Whitney Award finalist with around 40 works to her name. The book in that stack became Forgotten Notes, her 2001 debut. She thought it was the end of something. It turned out to be the beginning.

In a recent episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Sian to trace the faith running underneath all of it, back to a childhood where believing meant standing nearly alone.

The Cup of Tea That Started It All  

Sian grew up on the island of Anglesey, off the north coast of Wales, far from the coal-mining valleys of the south where most Welsh members of the Church trace their roots. Her family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when she was 10, and she remembers the conversion as a kind of small miracle.

It started with a cup of tea that never got poured. Her father, an academic, lived for a time beside a visiting scholar from Utah. Sian's mother invited the man's wife, Martha, over for tea. Martha did not drink tea, or coffee, but said she would love to come and visit, and that friendship opened the door to the missionaries.

Her father loved a good argument and spent years debating doctrine before he could take the leap. A tenacious nineteen-year-old missionary finally convinced him to stop debating and simply read the Book of Mormon and pray. When he found truth there, he gathered the family and asked if they wanted to be baptized with him. Three months after his own baptism, he was leading their tiny branch.

A Family of Two in Fifteen Hundred Students  

Being one of only two members in a school of 1,500 left no room to sit on the fence. In a country where nearly everyone drank tea, even turning down a cup marked Sian as different. She and her brother fielded the questions and the teasing, and they learned young that they were the only members most of their classmates would ever meet.

She recalls a teacher who was critical of her faith stopping her at the door with a question. As she answered, she felt words coming that she knew were not her own. She could not have said them herself, and she took it as quiet proof that God saw her, even there.

Alone on a Campus an Ocean Away  

When Sian left Wales for Brigham Young University, she crossed half the world by herself. This was before email and video calls. A letter home took ten days each way, and a phone call cost about a dollar a minute, so she rationed herself to twenty minutes a month.

She remembers watching students greet old friends and cousins across campus and feeling a pang that no one there knew her at all. In that loneliness, she says, Heavenly Father became her family. She could not see Him, but she knew He was with her, and that knowing held her up through every letter she wrote and every prayer in between.

The Books She Never Meant to Write  

Sian never planned to be an author. What she loved was reading. A short story she wrote for a class sounded to her like the pieces she had grown up reading in the New Era, so she submitted it. The magazine published it and asked for more, and her writing life quietly began.

The novels grew out of love before they grew into a career. She wrote her first one so her children could feel the Welsh heritage she had been raised inside, and she leaned toward historical fiction after realizing as a teenager that she had learned more history from a novel than from any classroom. Now she writes to lift people. At signings, readers tell her that one of her books was the only thing that carried them through a hospital room or a hard goodbye.

Her homeland keeps finding its way onto the page. In Within the Dark Hills, she set a story among the 19th century coal miners of Wales. Those men went down into the mines in winter darkness and came back up in darkness, living months without daylight. And still, she says, they formed the male voice choirs that helped give rise to the Tabernacle Choir.

The One Book No Author Could Have Faked  

After a life of building stories word by word, Sian reads one book differently from anyone who has never tried to write. Ask her why she believes, and she will tell you she has had too many witnesses that God lives, that Christ lived, and that the Book of Mormon is true. She is quick to add that the book carries a spirit she can feel, not only an argument she can make.

Looked at logically, she says, Joseph Smith could not have written it. She points to a comparison Hugh Nibley once drew. It would be like asking an ordinary person to write the history of Tibet across more than a thousand years, with no research and no library, in about 65 working days, and getting it right on the first draft.

In her world, that does not happen. Drafts get rewritten. Editors get involved. So when she reads even a few verses, her testimony is renewed that the book is scripture, another testament that points to Jesus Christ. For Sian Ann Bessey, the surest book she knows is the one she could never have written.

Key Takeaways  

Sian Ann Bessey's story is a reminder that standing alone for Christ can root a testimony deeper than standing in any crowd. The Spirit can hand us words to bear witness that we know we never could have found alone. A gift given back to God becomes a calling to lift others when they cannot lift themselves. The choice to follow Christ is easier made before the pressure comes. And her life points to a claim she stakes as a writer: the Book of Mormon is its own witness of Christ, and no one could have written it without God.

Thank you for reading this week's blog post inspired by the Why We Believe show. If you are interested in more stories like this, you can check out our other blog posts and episodes at WhyWeBelieve.com.

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Follow Sian Ann Bessey: Website: sianannbessey.com | Facebook: @sianannbessey | Instagram: @sian_bessey