Ask another BYU religion professor Randy Bott about Black, and this is what he says: "Wow. She's probably the best teacher on the BYU campus. She's a natural draw. She makes it come to life. She has you crying one minute and laughing the next."

Woodger calls Black "almost a legend in her own time."

Black's oratory skills and knowledge of her subject have transcended the classroom. She is bombarded with requests for speaking engagements, giving some 200 of them a year. She has lectured in all 50 states, and has served as a guide for church cruises and tours in the Mediterranean, Jerusalem, Alaska, Caribbean and Baltics.

The real question is when does this woman sleep? She has written or co-written more than 60 books and compiled statistical data that filled another 79 volumes. She found herself doing so much research in Nauvoo, Ill. — one of the early church's home bases — that she bought a house there.

"I am immersed in my subject — isn't it obvious? — and I love those students," says Black.

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Black grew up in a wealthy LDS family in Long Beach, Calif., where life revolved round the disparate worlds of church and high society. Her father, Karl Ward, a Chicago law school graduate, was a bishop and high councilor as well as a successful businessman with interests in furniture stores and real estate. Her mother, Dolly, was involved in philanthropy while managing the home with help from a cook and two maids.

Black led the debutante's life. She was instructed in the art of etiquette right down to a curtsy. She learned how to set a proper table. She learned manners, dancing, makeup and other social graces. She attended the debutante ball, an event in which young women are introduced to eligible bachelors and their families of a select upper class.

An outgoing, popular student who was active in clubs and student government, Black balked at the notion of haves and have-nots, as she puts it. She rebelled in subtle ways. She refused to curtsy at the ball, as was the practice, and she took a job in a bakery so she would fit in with other kids her age.

"It was the maddest my mother ever got," Black recalls. "She was appalled that I would take a job."

She matriculated to BYU, where she was voted Freshman of the Year, dabbled in modeling, participated in student government and took a degree in political science.

Her brothers were given part of the family business when they came of age; Black was given a sewing machine and told to marry well. She met and married a future lawyer and fellow Californian at BYU who was "tall, dark and handsome and lived on top of the hill in Whittier."