More than 10 years ago Helene Holt set out to do something different for a Relief Society spiritual living lesson and wrote a play on John Lathrop, a 17th-century religious reformer in England.

"It took a week to do the research, a week to write it, another week to type it up and three days for rehearsals," she said. "We then put it on in Relief Society in the Auburn (Calif.) Ward," where Sister Holt went to Church with her family.That was the first of nine performances of the play for groups ranging from the full-time missionaries to the stake leaders and bishops. After seeing the production, one sister suggested Sister Holt enlarge on her research and write a book based on the play.

Thus began a "spiritual journey" that led to the writing of Exiled, a novel on Lathrop that won first place in the Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition in 1984. Last year the manuscript was published by Paramount Books.

BYU's Motion Picture Studio has purchased the rights to a screenplay based on the book and is producing a full-length feature film on Lathrop.

The book is based on factual events of Lathrop's dissension from the Church of England, his arrest by the archbishop and his imprisonment. He later fled to America, where he established the West Parish Church in Barnstable, Mass., the oldest standing Congregational Church in America. Lathrop's descendants include three U.S. presidents and four presidents of the Church, including Joseph Smith.

When Sister Holt first wrote the play, she lived in Newcastle, Calif., had five children in school and was active in the Parent Teacher Organization. Her husband, Larry, was an administrator in the Placer City, Calif., school district.

"We lived on a farm and had horses, cows, chickens and goats," she said. "I was swamped with things to do."

Up until that time, the most serious writing Sister Holt had done was to send a few letters to the editor of the local newspaper.

She felt prompted to write a book about Lathrop, but it would be nine years before she would have the time and the opportunity to begin writing.

She had grown up in Berkeley, Calif., where she was converted to the Church through the influence of an LDS student who attended her high school.

In high school she also became interested in English and literature but not in writing. After graduation, she went to BYU and majored in English.

"But I never did take any creative writing classes," she said. "I only took literature classes because I didn't feel confident in writing."

She met her husband at BYU and both taught at BYU-Hawaii in the early 1970s before settling in Newcastle, Calif., to work on a farm that had been in her family for many years. The Holts lived there nine years before moving to Provo, Utah.

Sister Holt now works as executive secretary to the director of BYU's Motion Picture Studio. She and her husband are members of the Oakhills 4th Ward, Provo Utah Oak Hills Stake.

With most of her children grown, she began researching her book soon after moving to Provo. Using BYU's library and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, she was able to glean a significant amount of material on Lathrop.

Putting Lathrop's story on paper was much more difficult than she expected. She took a class at BYU on publishing and writing and was assigned to write her first chapter.

"I remember struggling and struggling," she said. "Every time I brought the first chapter back to class, I would be told by my classmates that it wasn't working. I would try harder and always receive the same negative response. Then my instructor, Jack Nelson, said, `Write the way you like to write instead of trying to write what you think your readers want to read.'

"That's what I did," she continued. "I set a goal to have the book done for the Utah Arts Council contest, which was six months away. I just set to work and a week before the deadline, I finished the first draft. That's what I submitted and that's what won."

"Everybody has a talent, and each person ought to seek to discover what it is," she said. "Who knows how the Lord wants you to use your talents? I had no reason to believe I had talent in the area of writing."