The book in question, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is not a thriller, not a romance, not even a heart-rending memoir that will later turn out to be a pack of lies. It is a book which marshals dubious documentation and tediously footnoted arcane citations to argue that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, they had children and, after the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus' family to France.

It's all nonsense, of course. Even the British court agreed. Without even a single reference to homicidal papist albinos, Holy Blood, Holy Grail is nothing at all like The Da Vinci Code. The case was thrown out.

And besides, everyone knows Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus' children to England and, later, the descendants emigrated to Utah.

Speaking in the Salt Lake Temple to a select group of church leaders on July 2, 1899, George Q. Cannon of The First Presidency said, "there are those in this audience who are descendants of the old 12 Apostles, and shall I say it, yes, descendants of the Savior himself. His seed is represented in this body of men."

Dan Brown's novel assertion that Jesus was married with children is old news to Mormons, who suspected as much all along. Growing up in the church in California, I dutifully got up every morning during high school at 5:30 a.m. to attend seminary. It was there I first learned that the marriage attended by Jesus in Cana, where he famously turned water into grape juice, was probably his own.

Mormons marshal several arguments that Jesus was married, including that only married men could be rabbis and teach and, if Jesus partook of all the sacraments including baptism, why not marriage?

And then there are the women.

Constantly exasperated by the thick-headedness of his male followers, Jesus shows a different side with women. One he saves from stoning and forgives her adultery. Another washes his feet with her tears. A woman is the first to witness the risen Christ.

Maybe the witness was his wife?

Anyway, it's a theory which even Martin Luther accepted. And would Jesus and Mary have been childless? Marriage without a quiver full of kids is unnatural, as The Sutherland Institute and the civic leaders of Kanab are more than happy to attest.

The notion that Jesus' children were removed to Britain is not a Mormon invention, but first we need to take a brief detour to ancient Israel. In 877 B.C., the Assyrians drubbed the Hebrews and took the survivors captive. On the way to present-day Iraq, 10 of the 12 tribes took a wrong turn and at least one reputedly set up shop in Britain.

British Israelism, the notion that good Englishmen were literally Israelites, gained traction in the early 1800s and soon had chapters throughout England and America.

So when Joseph of Arimathea showed up with Jesus' children in southwest Britain from Palestine, it was a kind of homecoming. One story even has it that Joseph took the child Jesus there on a previous visit.

Joseph planted his staff in Glastonbury which bloomed and grew into the Holy Thorn, establishing the oldest Christian community outside of Palestine, predating even that of Rome.

In 1190 while rooting around, the Monks at Glastonbury Abbey found the grave of King Arthur, which, providentially, goosed their flagging pilgrim trade. It is not much of a leap to guess a family link between Arthur and the King of kings, which is hinted at in Mallory's Morte D'Arthur.

If you're so disposed, one can further choose to see the mass British conversions to Mormonism in the 19th century as an exodus inspired by blood. Hence Cannon's remarkable statement concerning divine lineage.

So if you read The Da Vinci Code, now you know: it's a lot of hokum. Jesus' descendants couldn't possibly be French.

They're Utahns.

Pat Bagley is the cartoonist for The Salt Lake Tribune. He is the co-author with his brother, Will Bagley, of This is the Place, a young adult history of Utah.