The Courage of Captain Plum

An early example of pulp fiction, "The Courage of Captain Plum" is set in 1856 on an offshore island in Lake Michigan. A fevered and high-pitched adventure story, it pits a young man, Nathaniel Plum, against a colony of Mormons. The entire story takes place within 48 hours and includes blood-curdling scenes of torture, pursuit, imprisonment, and death by execution. That's not all. Well mixed with all the adrenalin is a head-spinning concoction of romantic and sexual appetites. Far-fetched as the story may sound, it has some basis in history. A splinter group of Mormon faithful, under the leadership of James Strang, did in fact not follow Brigham Young to Utah in 1846. Claiming to be the true church, they remained behind on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, with Strang proclaimed as their "king." In the novel, Mormons are a unwelcome cult, and Strang is their cruel spiritual leader and monarch. Charismatic and cunning, he is a violent tyrant, with six wives and plans for a seventh. While his name suggests the stranglehold he has on the hearts and minds of his followers, he also has a reputation as a ravager of peaceable settlements elsewhere. Plum, the young captain of a sloop loaded with barrels of gunpowder, comes ashore on the island with plans to put Strang out of business. In short order, he meets an old man with all the signs of lunacy, spies a pretty girl, Marion, and instantly falls in love, and intervenes in the public flogging of a young man who turns out to be Marion's brother. The two men escape through island marshes with baying bloodhounds in hot pursuit. Taken prisoner, Captain Plum and Marion's brother are thrown into a dank cell, where they await certain execution. In all this, Plum learns that Marion is to be married to Strang, but that she will commit suicide rather than be the man's unwilling bride. The young captain is distraught. Taken from the prison in the dead of night, the two men are rowed to the mainland where they are tied to stakes and left to die from strangulation. At the point of death, they are saved by Marion and Neil's girlfriend, Winnsome. Returning to the island, Plum arrives in time for yet another armed assault, this time by a force of U.S. soldiers. Strang is taken, an old man who has befriended Plum is shot and dies after a long confession, and Plum and Marion fall into each other's arms professing their undying love.