There Ferris Greenslet encouraged Whipple to apply for Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, which she won in 1938 in advance of her first novel.

The novel focuses on the life of Clorinda (Clory), who becomes the third wife of Abijah MacIntyre and lives in Southern Utah during its early years of colonization by Mormon pioneers.

John A. Widtsoe, a prominent church leader, wrote that its treatment of polygamy was unfair, but that it showed the "epic value" of early settlements.

Among the many real characters such as Brigham Young, John D. Lee, and Erastus Snow, The Giant Joshua focuses primarily on Abijah MacIntyre and his wives, Bathsheba, Willie, and Clorinda (Clory), who move to southern Utah in 1861, and become prominent members of the communities of Washington, Santa Clara, and St. George during their founding years.

Later, Clory is pregnant and determined to leave St. George, but stays after seeing the natural beauty of a large group of Sego Lilies.

Clory gives birth to a daughter nicknamed Kissy, and John D. Lee is ignored by his neighbors after the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Mormon scholar Terryl Givens notes that the book presents plural marriage as a "marathon Abrahamic test" of faith similar to colonizing Utah's desert.

[2] Folklorist William A. Wilson praised the way Whipple used folklore in context in a way that elicited sympathy and understanding of folk beliefs.

Greenslet advised Whipple to make the novella a little longer; instead, she proposed a Mormon epic and sent a sample chapter.

[4]: 105, 110–111  Whipple lived with her parents while she wrote the chapters for the fellowship application, often getting inspiration right before falling asleep and working through the night.

He constantly gave her advice, personally lent her money, and made it possible for her to stay at the artist colony Yaddo to finish writing the book.

[7] Joseph Walker, an ex-Mormon doctor from St. George living in Hollywood, read early manuscripts and wrote Whipple encouraging letters.

As a fellowship winner, the accompanying contract was not generous, and Whipple had received advances on her royalty checks to finish the novel.

[4]: 386  In 1976, Sam Weller, a prominent bookseller in Salt Lake City, reprinted it in hardback under his Western Epics imprint,[4]: 386  where it went through several printings.

[10] Writing in the Book-of-the-Month-Club Bulletin, Avis DeVoto praised the way Whipple used historical details about clothing and food in the book, which made her characters "bursting with vitality.

"[11] John Selby's review, which appeared in multiple newspapers, described the characters as "real people, whose beliefs seal them up, as it were, in a kind of transparent separateness in which [they] seem oddly luminous.

"[12][13][14] Edith Walton at The New York Times wrote that Whipple's writing was not anti-Mormon, but "scrupulously fair and even sympathetic," adding that though the book was "maybe a little over-long," it was "rich, robust and oddly exciting.

John A. Widtsoe, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, wrote in The Improvement Era that its treatment of polygamy was unfair,[2] though he praised how it showed the "epic value" of Mormon settlements.

"[17] Whipple's father intercepted her advance copy and told her it was "vulgar" while other residents of St. George had mixed feelings about how their ancestors' stories were included or excluded.

He critiqued the undisciplined narrative style, which he described as often succumbing to "ballooning clichés typical of the slick popular idiom of the thirties and forties.

In fall 1945, Whipple signed a contract with Simon and Schuster to publish the sequel, to be titled Cleave the Wood.