Stephenie Meyer might be the most famous Mormon to ever take the bookstores, movie theaters, and all-thing pop culture combine, and the press and fans seem to have an insatiable interest in exploring how this Mormon Mom of three came to write one of the most bestselling books the world over, about vampires and werewolves no less. And while it’s true, everyone, their mother, daughter, and maybe even Dad by now, has written about hot, erotic chastity and Twilight (yours truly included, in “True Love Waits” in the WSJ), most exploration of Mormon theological themes have stopped there.

Not so in “Big Vampire Love: What’s So Mormon about Twilight?” by scholar-journalists Anthony Petro and Samira Mehta, who start with chastity but move quickly beyond this most obvious topic, claiming that, “More than the superhuman desire to control the teenage sexual libido, Meyer’s chronicle also draws upon much older, if somewhat less sexy, Mormon themes of eternal marriage and family life.”
Check out their exploration of how Mormon families can be sealed in the Temple for all eternity, and, in light of this, “Bella and Edward’s Eternal En-sealment” (fascinating stuff!), why “Bella must be married to Edward before he is willing to “change” her,” which “echoes the idea of Mormon celestial marriage,” and finally, what the whole vampire-human union which produces vampire-human baby says about, um, family values.
A must-read for Twilight fans with brains.