What if your bishop is a petty tyrant who loves nothing so much as the power he has over other people’s lives. You can’t simply switch to another ward. So, well… Somebody has to off him. But who? That’s the premise of Donna Banta’s delightfully entertaining and totally Mormon murder…
Category: Book Review
Book Review: Could I Vote for a Mormon for President?
Review of Could I Vote for a Mormon for President? An Election Year Guide to Mitt Romneys Religion, by Ryan T. Cragun and Rick Phillips, July 2012, Strange Violin Editions (strangeviolineditions.com). Could I Vote for a Mormon for President? is a well-written, thoughtful, fair, and balanced appraisal of the Mormon…
The Contradiction of God: Brett Cottrell’s “The Valley of Fire”
Theology can be confusing and contradictory. If God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence can be reconciled with the existence of evil, it kinds makes you wonder what’s going on in God’s head. Even if it doesn’t make sense, it makes a great premise for a fantasy-adventure novel!! In The Valley of Fire…
A road-trip out of crazy: “Hippie Boy,” by Ingrid Ricks
Dad was a master salesman who could talk anyone into anything, and life on the road with him was the wildest adventure any kid could possibly imagine. Unfortunately, since he was often unreliable and occasionally violent, it wasn’t always the good kind of adventure — but it was a great…
The Armpit of the Mission Field: “Heaven Up Here” by John K. Williams
When John got his mission call to Bolivia, it was like a joke come true. Before the letter came, he and his friends had a running gag that he’d be sent there — because it’s the clich worst-possible foreign mission (see here for a coincidental example). Then he really got…
Struggling in the depths of Mormon faith: Stephen Carter’s “What of the Night?”
I also learned that the great stories of the world have second acts. This may seem like a silly thing to say, but so many stories set up the problem (the job of the first act) and then resolve it (the job of the third act) with little to no…
My place in Mormon history
A lot of people — upon leaving the CoJCoL-dS — are amazed to discover how fascinating LDS church history really is. It’s not just that the whitewashed history in Sunday School is incomplete and inaccurate. It’s that you’re force-fed this watery-porridge version of church history that inoculates many people from…
Johnny Townsend’s Mormons in life and imagination!
Have you ever wondered what spirit prison would be like? Mormons believe that when people die, their spirits go to either “spirit paradise” or “spirit prison” to await Judgment Day. They also believe that missionaries from spirit prison can teach the gospel to spirits in spirit prison (who can be…
Mission Complete: Jacob Young’s “Harvest”
An LDS mission strange and fascinating experience. Up until recently, though, it’s been tricky for people to get an idea of what a Mormon mission is really like without serving one. Part of the problem is that Mormon journals are supposed to be faith-promoting, in order to potentially serve as…
Signature Books: Important Mormon Diary Published
Salt Lake City In December 1892, the 33-year-old Mormon apostle Abraham H. Cannon recorded in his diary: At my Quorum meeting on Thursday the brethren were told that our success in the Church [law]suits was in a great measure due to the fact that we have a partner of Justice…