IRREANTUM

EXPLORING MORMON LITERATURE

MAGAZINE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR MORMON LETTERS

Winter 2003/ Spring 2004 • $6.00

Neil LaBute
Also featuring Linda Paulson Adams, Marilyn Brown, Samuel Brown,
Stephen Carter, Darin Cozzens, John-Charles Duffy, Jongiorgi Enos,
Brian Evenson, Susan Elizabeth Howe, Janean Justham,
Angie Lofthouse, Travis Manning, Alan Rex Mitchell, John Moyer,
Jana Bouck Remy, Peter J. Sorensen, and Katherine Woodbury

Fiction, reviews, literary news, and more

 Signature Books
Publisher of Western and Mormon-Related Fiction, Essay, and Art

The Conversion of Jeff Williams

by Douglas Thayer
fiction, 160 pages, $18.95, paperback

visit us at www.signaturebooks.com
 E d i t o r i a l S t a f f

Christopher K. Bigelow Managing editor Marny K. Parkin Speculative fiction coeditor

Harlow S. Clark Poetry editor and AML-List Highlights editor
Travis Manning Essay editor Jana Bouck Remy Review editor
Scott R. Parkin Speculative fiction coeditor Quinn Warnick Fiction editor

A M L B o a r d

Melissa Proffitt President Tyler Moulton Board member

Gideon Burton Annual Meeting Chair Jen Wahlquist Board member
Suzanne Brady Board member

A M L S t a f f

Linda Hunter Adams AML Annual editor Jonathan Langford AML-List moderator
Christopher K. Bigelow Managing editor Jacob Proffitt Assistant AML-List moderator
Gideon Burton Assistant AML-List moderator Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury Writers' conference
John-Charles Duffy Treasurer and webmaster

Irreantum (ISSN 1528-0594) is published four
times a year-by the Association for Mormon Letters
(AML), P.O. Box 51364, Provo, UT 84605-1364, www.
aml-online.org. © 2004 by the Association for Mormon
Letters. Membership in the AML is $25 for one year,
which includes an Irreantum subscription. Subscrip-
tions to Irreantum may be purchased separately from
AML membership for $16 per year, and single copies are
$6 (postpaid). Advertising rates begin at $50 for a full
page. The AML is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization,
so contributions of any amount are tax deductible and
gratefully accepted.
Irreantum welcomes unsolicited essays, reviews, fic-
tion, poetry, and other manuscripts, and we invite letters
intended for publication. Please submit all manuscripts
and queries to irreantum2@cs.com. If you do not have
access to e-mail, mail your text on a floppy disk to Irre-
antum, c/o AML, PO Box 51364, Provo, UT 84605-
1364. Submissions on paper are discouraged. Upon
specific request to irreantum2@cs.com, we will send
authors two complimentary copies of an issue in which
their work appears.
Views expressed in Irreantum do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the editors or of AML board
members. This magazine has no official connection with
or endorsement by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints. Irreantum is supported by a grant from the
Utah Arts Council and the National Endowment for the
Arts, Washington, D.C.

Winter 2003/Spring 2004 4 Irreantum

 IRREANTUM
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 • Volume 5, Number 4/Volume 6, Number 1
C o n t
Exploring Mormon Film
Interviews
Neil LaBute ................................................ 13
John Moyer ............................................... 33
Essays
Problematic Moralist: Neil LaBute and
the Via Negativa, John-Charles Duffy ..... 18
Why Crossover Is a Dirty Word,
Jongiorgi Enos......................................... 21
HaleStorm Showers May Bring Flowers,
Stephen Carter........................................ 44
Movie Moratorium, Alan Rex Mitchell ....... 48
Screenplay Excerpt
Mobsters & Mormons, John Moyer ............ 39
Reports
Indie Mormon Cinema Attempts a Main-
stream Conversion, Ed Halter ................ 53
Dave Wolverton Pursues Big-Budget Movie
Project, Robyn Heirtzler ......................... 55
Film Novelization Excerpt
Brigham City, Marilyn Brown .................... 57
Reviews
Pride & Prejudice Succeeds on Its Own Terms,
Scott Parkin
A review of the movie Pride & Prejudice..133
Not about Mormons, Jonathan Langford
A review of Tony Kushner’s
Angels in America ................................. 135
Irreantum
e n t s
Editorials
Transition Time, Christopher Bigelow ...................7
Literary Connections to Antiquity,
Harlow S. Clark ..........................................116
AML News ....................................................8
Stories
Autobahn, Neil LaBute ......................................66
Sacred Places, Angie Lofthouse ............................70
The Care of the State, Brian Evenson ................ 77
The Meek Shall Inherit, Samuel Brown .............82
Seriously, Katherine Woodbury ........................... 93
Memoirs
Porch Haircut, Darin Cozzens ...........................89
Superman, Travis Manning .............................. 121
Interviews
Susan Elizabeth Howe ..................................... 100
Linda Paulson Adams ...................................... 104
Novel Excerpt
Refining Fire, Linda Paulson Adams .................111
Essay
A Poem Is a Gift, Janean Justham ....................118
Poetry
A Leg, to Stand On, Jana Bouck Remy.................6
Mother-Daughter, Janean Justham ...................116
Worst Details, Janean Justham .........................117
Poetry Excerpt
From the Epic Mormoniad: 1 Nephi 4–5,
Peter J. Sorensen .........................................119
continued
5 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 P o e t r y
continued A Leg, to Stand On
Reviews
What it’s like to have one leg in a world of two?
2003 in Review: Mormon Fiction and Drama,
One foot one thigh one knee
Andrew Hall ............................................... 126
Five toes
LaBute’s “Attempt at Resurrection,”
What wakes with one leg, has two by noon, and
R. W. Rasband
several spares in the closet?
A review of Neil LaBute’s play
In the morning you use crutches to hop into the
The Distance from Here ............................... 132
shower.
Not-So-Divine Womanhood,
You cling to the tile wall for balance as you reach
Melody Warnick
for the shampoo.
A review of Veda Hale’s Ragged Circle ......... 138
To rinse your hair you crunch your toes and
A Black Mormon’s Memoir, Henry Miles
slowly spin around in a circle.
A review of Darron Terry Smith’s
Water and suds on your back now.
What Matters Most: A Story of
Sometimes the squeak of your wet foot sliding on
Human Potential .........................................139
the floor of the tub sounds like a fart.
A Good, Fun Story of Romantic Trials,
Your roommates think you let it rip in the shower.
Katie Parker
A review of Tamra Norton’s
Later you wash the socket of your fake leg with
Molly Married?............................................ 143
hot water and antibacterial soap.
Dr. Anthony Strikes Again, Jeffrey Needle
It has the crust of sweat, blood, and pus from
A review of Carl B. Andersen’s
yesterday’s pressure sores.
The Hidden Path......................................... 144
Prosthesis held on by suction.
Characters Face Difficult Choices,
A silicon socket. Endolite frame. Hydraulic knee.
Katie Parker
Titanium tibia.
A review of Shelly Johnson-Choong’s
Foam cover shaped to match the other.
Finding Home .............................................145
Five toes carved into the front of the foot:
Challenging and Troubling Story,
Nail and toe the same shade of bubble-gum pink.
Jeffrey Needle
A review of Elizabeth Petty Bentley’s
Some days you show your metal innards.
The Fly on the Rose...................................... 146
People stare, they watch your back.
Kidnapped Girl Guides Family,
Getting a good look when it is no longer rude.
Katie Parker
A review of Rachel Ann Nunes’s —Jana Bouck Remy
A Heartbeat Away ....................................... 147
A Debut Novel Shows Potential, Jana Bouck Remy is studying U.S. history at UC
Jeffrey Needle Irvine. She is the book review editor for IRREANTUM.
A review Linda Paulson Adams’s
Prodigal Journey .......................................... 149
Selected Recent Releases .................................. 151

Mormon Literary Scene .................. 155

Winter 2003/Spring 2004 6 Irreantum

 E d i t o r i a l
Transition Time
By Christopher Bigelow
A fter five years of cofounding and managing
Irreantum, I am concluding my editorship
with this issue. It’s been a wonderful five years,
providing me with more experience and enjoyment
than any other endeavor to date in my Mormon
experience, including my two-year proselytizing
mission and six years as an Ensign editor. I’ve grown
to more intimately understand the Mormon cul-
ture, I’ve explored nearly all Mormon literary mani-
festations in which I’m personally most interested,
I’ve developed many rewarding acquaintances and
friendships, and I’ve learned how to manage a small
organization, from recruiting volunteers to execut-
ing a publicity strategy to staying within a budget.
Having accomplished nearly all that I set out to
do—more in some areas (author interviews), less
in others (circulation)—I simply feel the time has
come to move on and let someone else take a turn.
As some of you may recall, this journal began in
1999 when Levi Peterson turned over the AML’s
newsletter to Benson Parkinson and me, so we could
transform it into a literary journal. (I remember
Levi saying something about not having the energy
to do more with the newsletter; five years later,
he is now the editor of Dialogue.) Our first issue,
forty-four pages photocopied and saddle-stitched
at Kinko’s, went out to about a hundred people.
Twenty issues later, we publish over a hundred pages
per issue perfect-bound for a readership that holds
steady at about five hundred, which isn’t too bad for
a literary journal, a publishing format the average
person finds about as appealing as castor oil. I think
most readers would agree that the quality of the
content has steadily risen over the years, while the
visual and production qualities have perhaps lagged
somewhat, both because of budget constraints and
my own lack of stretching beyond what I felt was an
adequate, low-maintenance format.
The AML has been an ideal nonprofit umbrella
organization under which to work, providing a
Irreantum
ready-made community to draw upon (mainly
through AML-List) and yet lacking the adminis-
trative muscle to interfere much. The board has
allowed me almost complete free rein with this
magazine, with only one or two mild tugs to the
right that I can remember. In turn, I have avoided
burnout during these five years by giving depart-
ment editors almost total autonomy, spending
most of my time and energy doing background
administrative tasks, acting as the magazine’s cen-
tral hub, and handling the interviews and literary
news. I can tell you one thing: I don’t think I could
have accomplished this much without e-mail!
We conducted the editorial and production work
almost completely virtually, with little or no paper
involved until issues were actually printed.
I am assuming the AML will continue pub-
lishing a literary magazine, although the future is
always uncertain for such a self-funded volunteer
organization. A transition committee for Irrean-
tum is already in place, and I hope they identify
a suitable editorial team soon. The magazine may
change a little or a lot, and some ground may be
lost in the publication schedule as the AML makes
this transition. As both the primary fundraiser and
spender for the past five years, I am leaving the
organization well in the black, and I’m catching up
on my handful of delinquent months by making
this issue a double issue. I realize there is some risk
that Irreantum could fade away, but I figure that
if the magazine isn’t compelling enough to attract
new leadership, talent, and enthusiasm, perhaps it’s
not compelling enough to continue publishing at
all. Irreantum’s future is now out of my hands,
and I hope it survives and even flourishes.
I’d like to thank the fellow editors I’ve worked
with over the years. Although Benson Parkinson
dropped out of AML activity not long after we
started Irreantum, he was instrumental during the
first year. Jana Remy stands out for her consistent
work as review editor from the magazine’s incep-
tion, and Harlow Clark served a full five years as
poetry editor. I don’t think the magazine would
have progressed this far without the layout help of
Marny Parkin, who also made many editorial con-
tributions. Continuing the service to Mormon letters
7 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
he first began with Wasatch Review International
(1992–96), Tory Anderson ran our fiction depart-
ment for several years. Gideon Burton and Todd
Petersen helped in several capacities for shorter
seasons, and Ed Snow, John Bennion, Annette
Lyon, and others served as guest editors for themed
issues. Our two newest editors, Quinn Warnick
and Travis Manning, have already made valuable
contributions to the magazine.
I’m amazed at how important and absorb-
ing Irreantum has been for me, and I have not
made the decision to step down lightly or easily.
I feel a sense of having paid some substantial dues
with this nearly two-thousand-page editorial labor,
although I’m not sure exactly for what purpose yet
(or maybe Irreantum was my reward for the dues
I paid at the Ensign). Maybe if the response had
been greater or the circulation was still making
steady progress toward one thousand, I might have
decided to renew my commitment for another five
years. Instead, I feel better about stepping back
from active AML service and devoting more time
to my own writing projects (I recently signed my
first book contract). If anyone ever wants to contact
me directly, I’m at chris.bigelow@unicity.net.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
A M L N e w s
AML Personnel Changes
Announced at the annual meeting on March 6,
2004, the following personnel changes affecting
the AML board and staff have taken place:
Gideon Burton concluded his second term
as AML president. Board members who have
finished their terms include Sharlee Glenn, Gae
Lyn Henderson, and Eric Samuelsen. Depart-
ing staff members include Christopher Bigelow
as Irreantum managing editor, Terry Jeffress as
AML webmaster, and D. Michael Martindale as
writers’ conference chair. Some time ago, Andrew
Hall resigned as AML-List assistant moderator.
The AML thanks all of these volunteers for their
service.
Melissa Proffitt is the new AML president.
Gideon Burton will serve as conference chair for
next year’s annual meeting. Board member Kath-
leen Dalton-Woodbury is now the writers confer-
ence chair and AML webmaster. Jacob Proffitt and
Gideon Burton are the new assistant moderators
for AML-List, with Jonathan Langford continuing
as AML-List moderator. Irreantum’s transition team
includes Karen Moloney, Laraine Wilkins, Gideon
Burton, and Melissa Proffitt.
AML Awards
At the annual meeting held on March 6, 2004,
at the Salt Lake Public Library, the AML made the
following awards for significant literary achieve-
ments during 2003:
Novel: The Conversion of Jeff Williams,
Douglas Thayer
Reading a book that touches the heart and stimu-
lates the imagination is cause for celebration.
When this book leaves you wanting more, such a
book, and its author, merit the highest praise.
The Conversion of Jeff Williams tells the story of a
Mormon teen, lost in the adventure of growing up,
unfocused and unsure, reaching out for meaning
and direction. He finds all this in a visit to a cousin
8 Irreantum
in Provo. Jeff ’s immersion in Mormon culture, so
different from his life in California, causes him to
look deeply into his own soul, sorting the impor-
tant from the trivial and defining his own life’s
journey.
But this comes with a price. Jeff must now
reevaluate his life, his attitudes and beliefs, and the
strength of his testimony. Standing side-by-side
with his cousin Christopher, he realizes he still has
much growing up—and growing out—to do. Jeff ’s
journey to wholeness is the meat of this story. And
in that story we each may find echoes of our own
experience.
This is what good fiction writing is all about. It
narrows the distance between the characters and
the reader and draws the reader into the plot. It
makes imaginary things seem real. And, although
the characters are invented, the reader finds echoes
of reality in the lives of those characters.
Douglas Thayer’s fine sense of irony, his adept
pacing and sensitive writing, are once again dem-
onstrated in this fine novel. Mormon writing is
truly coming into full flower, and Thayer is part of
this process.
Historical Fiction: Standing on the Prom-
ises, Margaret Blair Young and Darius
Aidan Gray
The Association for Mormon Letters is pleased to
present its first award for historical fiction to Mar-
garet Blair Young and Darius Aidan Gray for their
trilogy Standing on the Promises. Over the course of
three novels, the reader is taken on a journey from
the early nineteenth century to the present day, fol-
lowing the paths of black pioneers who converted
to the Mormon faith in its earliest days.
The story is as unflinching in its portrayal of
this period of American history, in which even free
blacks were mistreated and condescended to, as it
is gentle and understanding in tone, putting the
actions of early Saints in the historical context of
that day. As readers discover the perseverance of
black men and women in the face of ongoing per-
secution, even at the hands of some of their fellow
Saints, they also learn of the extraordinary strength
Irreantum
of character that kept them going. Pioneers such as
Jane Manning James, Elijah Abel, and Green Flake
had a conviction of the truth of the restored gospel
that gave them the strength and humility and love
to endure to the end. They were people of great
trials, but also of great faith.
This is not just the history of black Latter-day
Saints. It is the history of our church, and in some
ways the history of all its members—a pioneer
story in the richest sense. Standing on the Promises
not only brings this largely forgotten history to
light; it also makes it entertaining and accessible
to readers of all backgrounds. It is an important
contribution to the literature of our people and one
that we hope will set a standard for stories yet to be
told.
Young Adult Fiction: Dante’s Daughter,
Kimberley Heuston
Though Dante’s Daughter is set in Italy and France
in the early 1300s and depicts a time and culture
far removed from the lives of modern youth, it
shows that people are the same throughout the
ages, that family and home and love are important
no matter when or where you live. This is a tender
story of a girl who does not ask to be remembered,
only to be loved. She is swept along by the choices
her parents make until she is finally old enough
to make choices of her own. Through all that, she
manages to discover and develop her own talents
and dreams and to touch the lives of others.
Kimberley Heuston’s depiction of the life of a
young girl who lived centuries ago is fresh and
insightful. It resonates with the longings and frus-
trations of any time period and brings its readers
closer to characters that would otherwise be per-
ceived as foreign and inaccessible. History may not
say much about the daughter of Dante Alighieri,
but Kimberley Heuston gives her readers the chance
to love her, as well as all the other girls no one
remembers but who were on the fringes of recorded
events, where they dreamed their own dreams and
found love and loss, just as we do.
9 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Short Fiction:
“Toaster Road,” Coke Newell
“Toaster Road” is the compelling story of a new
LDS convert and his experience in an alien, Mor-
mon environment: Rexburg, Idaho. The hero has
a bumpy ride, unsure of what he should do, what
he can do, and how to chart his course among a
people so different from everything he is used to.
The story is told with a strong and personal voice,
authentic and engaging. The settings are vivid and
moving, making the reader feel that they are, for
example, in a twilit wilderness hearing the song “I
Am a Child of God” for the very first time.
The story is not saccharine or predictable,
however. Coke Newell is not oblivious to our
flaws and hypocrisies. He does not hide or gloss
over the conflicts young LDS people experi-
ence in their social and sexual relations—the
mixed messages and emotional storms inherent
in building romantic connections in a culture
where physical relations are, at best, discour-
aged. And the characters are flawed, sometimes
seriously. The protagonist has to come to terms
with a culture that tells him he must change
his attitudes, his pursuits, his music, and his
nature—to choose a middle road between anni-
hilating and improving himself.
In the end, “Toaster Road” touches the heart
and opens opportunities for stories of love and
faith that are honest in their depictions of LDS life
and relationships. This story is uniquely relevant
to audiences both LDS and not. It is a wonderful
extension of the LDS literary tradition and one we
hope our artists continue to explore.
In addition, the AML wishes to honorably
mention two additional works of short fiction
that appeared in 2003: “The Day Pietro Coppino
Spoke to the Mountain,” by William Shunn; and
“A Good Sign,” by Robert Van Wagoner.
Editing: Christopher Bigelow, Irreantum
Five years ago the literary quarterly of the Associa-
tion for Mormon Letters, Irreantum, was launched.
Though every periodical is an ensemble creation, it
has been Chris Bigelow who has had the vision, the
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
practical knowledge, and the persistence to keep
Irreantum going and growing.
Irreantum has put AML and Mormon literature
on the map, providing an important new outlet
for new writers and key information about LDS
publishing news and literary events. With no insti-
tutional support and almost no grant money, Chris
Bigelow has produced on a shoestring budget and
with a small group of contributing editors a peri-
odical that anywhere else would require a much
greater budget and workforce to produce.
There is an art to being a managing editor every
bit as much as there is to being a novelist or play-
wright, and Chris has persistently and quietly handled
most of the production and editorial oversight,
subscriptions, and promotion. To count his suc-
cesses is largely to count the AML’s successes in the
last five years. Irreantum has broadened the scope
and reach of the AML. Because of his efforts, there
now exists a sizable body of new stories, poems,
and criticism that has helped inform readers and
inspire writers.
Chris has been particularly proactive in seek-
ing out and doing interviews with a variety
of Mormon authors. Irreantum has featured
lively interviews with authors as diverse and
interesting as Levi Peterson, Rachel Nunes,
Margaret Young, Dean Hughes, Richard
Dutcher, Dave Wolverton, Robert Kirby,
Anne Perry, Brady Udall, Robert Smith, Anita
Stansfield, Terry Tempest Williams, Doug-
las Thayer, Rick Walton, and Douglas Alder.
For launching and sustaining Irreantum, and for
drawing attention to the many authors, publica-
tions, and events that constitute the world of Mor-
mon literature, Christopher Bigelow has earned
our profound thanks and created a lasting legacy.
Publishing: BYU Studies
Since its inception in 1959, BYU Studies has
played a pivotal role in supporting and promot-
ing Mormon literature and Mormon literary
studies. In BYU Studies numerous Mormon
historical writings of literary interest have first
been edited for publication, including letters,
journals, sermons, biographies, and other texts
10 Irreantum
that document the long tradition of Mormon
literary writing.
Contemporary Mormon writers have found
a welcome place in the pages of BYU Studies,
publishing widely and continuously in a variety
of genres. Authors very familiar to Mormon liter-
ary history have appeared there, including fiction
writers Eileen Gibbons Kump, Donald Marshall,
and Douglas Thayer and poets Clinton Larson,
Marden Clark, Laura Hamblin, John Harris, and
Susan Howe. Noted personal essayists such as Tessa
Meyer Santiago have appeared in the journal,
which continues to encourage the development of
Mormon writing through its annual personal essay
and poetry contests.
Importantly, BYU Studies has promoted the nec-
essary winnowing procedure that is literary criti-
cism, featuring numerous book reviews by people
such as Elouise Bell and Gladys Farmer, as well as
in-depth literary analyses by such critics as Gloria
Cronin, Ed Hart, Richard Cracroft, Eugene England,
Edward Geary, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, and
John Bennion.
Moreover, the academic study of Mormon lit-
erature would not be possible without the subject
bibliographies published in BYU Studies by Chad
Flake, Scott Duvall, and others, which now form
the basis of the Mormon Literature Database. In
addition, BYU Studies has been a place where Mor-
mon literary critics have been able to discuss authors
and works outside of Mormonism, from Tolstoy
to Twain, from the Brontë sisters to Borges, from
George Eliot to T. S. Eliot, from Dostoevsky to
Arthur Conan Doyle.
The authors and editors that have contributed
to BYU Studies have made a lasting impact upon
LDS literary studies. The Association for Mormon
Letters wishes to recognize BYU Studies and its
host institution for this ongoing contribution to
Mormon literary writing.
Film Adaptation: Pride and
Prejudice, Anne K. Black, Jason Faller,
and Katherine Swigert
Adapting a novel for the screen, particularly a well-
loved and much-read novel, is a tricky business.
In adapting Jane Austen’s classic work Pride and
Irreantum
Prejudice, screenwriters Anne Black, Jason Faller,
and Katherine Swigert have captured the essence
of Austen’s novel by retelling the story in a modern
setting among Latter-day Saint characters.
The preoccupation Mormon culture has with
marrying off its young adults is strangely similar to
the rituals of meeting and marrying described with
such insight and wit by Austen, which makes this
contemporary version ring true. The screenplay
translates the story from early nineteenth-century
society into a recognizable modern analogue, mak-
ing it accessible to those who are unfamiliar with
the book without sacrificing any of the authenticity
demanded by lifelong fans. The result is a charm-
ing tribute to a great work of literature.
Honorary Lifetime Membership: Bruce
W. Jorgensen
As an author, Bruce Jorgensen’s publications have
ranged broadly, both in genre and audience. His
poetry has appeared in Mormon journals such as
BYU Studies, Dialogue, Sunstone, and Irreantum,
but also in national journals, such as the Carolina
Quarterly. His poems are probingly occasional or
lyrical and personal, sometimes colloquial, some-
times historical. In every case they show acute sen-
sitivity to form: image, cadence, length of line.
That same precision of diction and vividness of
image is carried into his short stories, which focus
on the tensions and the pleasures of domestic life,
man and wife especially, where the erotic and rou-
tine are mingled in a subtle and productive tension.
One such story, perhaps the finest literary story
ever published in that magazine, appeared in 1979
in the Ensign.
Jorgensen excels within the essay: sometimes
of the personal variety, more often of the critical
variety. He is one of the architects of contempo-
rary Mormon literary history, probing the literary
nature of the Book of Mormon, examining the
major Mormon fiction writers—Whipple, Sorensen,
Peterson, Thayer—and doing so from the vantage
point not only of a studied appreciation of Mor-
mon belief but from a broad and deep knowledge
of American and world literature. He models a
type of careful and charitable reading that inspires
11 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
readers to respect the potency of Mormon doctrine
and to likewise know and feel the vividness of
imaginative writing from within and outside our
religion.
As a teacher Jorgensen has brought to Mormon
readers an acute appreciation of important writers
and thinkers, such as Reynolds Price, George P. Elliott,
and Gina Berriault. And his painstaking critiques
of student writing have required that they give due
appreciation to the medium in which they work.
As president of the Association for Mormon
Letters in 1990, Bruce Jorgensen gave a landmark
address, “To Tell and Hear Stories: Let the Stranger
Say,” in which he introduced the master metaphor
of hospitality as a main course for Mormon criti-
cism, grounding his argument in scripture and in
the ancient traditions of honoring guests and
strangers that were customary to the Greeks. This
essay, urging Latter-day Saints to broadened aware-
ness of storytelling beyond our culture, has sparked
the sort of ongoing critical debate that demon-
strates the robust nature of Mormon criticism and
the health of the AML itself.
Jorgensen has built a bridge from the Mormon
literary world to a larger one, taking Mormons
meaningfully into genres, texts, and authors that
deserve the careful reading he directs them to but
also taking those who are outside Mormonism into
Mormon texts by publishing criticism about LDS
authors in national literary journals such as Western
American Literature, where he analyzed the lyric
form of Douglas Thayer’s work.
Bruce Jorgensen is the only author to appear
in all three of the important Mormon literary
anthologies published in recent years: Harvest, for
his poetry; Bright Angels and Familiars, for his fic-
tion; and Tending the Garden, for his criticism. For
modeling such breadth, for teaching us the vital
relationship between reading well and writing well,
for his years of playing such a genial host at the
banquet of Mormon literary life, the Association
for Mormon Letters proudly bestows on him hon-
orary lifetime membership.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Marilyn Brown Novel Award:
Janean Justham
The 2004 winner of the AML’s thousand-dollar
prize for an unpublished novel went to Salt Lake
City’s Janean Justham for her manuscript House
Dreams.
“A knockout book,” one of the five judges wrote.
“This is it—a contemporary Mormon woman’s life
documenting abuse thoroughly in a voice as clean
and sharp as a knife—as in not to bring peace, but a
sword.”
Even those judges who did not choose House
Dreams as the award winner wrote positive state-
ments about the writer’s ability: “The writing style
is quite accomplished,” “The writing is good,”
“The author is excellent at portraying relationships
and feelings, frustrations and small victories,” “The
writing is spare and yet evocative, and very power-
ful.” One reader wrote: “It’s an amazing achieve-
ment. I don’t know when I’ve felt so immersed in a
character’s mind, her thoughts, her feelings.”
Though there were negative reactions to the
book, such as its sprawling size and probable need
to be cut, most readers could not help but be taken
in eventually by this writing. “Initially I was a
little put off by it. The opening dream sequence
felt melodramatic, and then the tone shifted,
and we got into that extraordinary accretion of
detail, all those short scenes. What was interesting
about those scenes is how initially they don’t add
up. In one scene Laurel is genuinely in love with
and grateful to Rick. In the very next scene, Rick
behaves atrociously, and Laurel is stunned, hurt,
betrayed, in pain. But over the course of the book,
it does add up. And you realize that we’ve burrowed
so deeply into the mind of this woman that all the
contradictions and paradoxes do add up to a whole,
to a gestalt.”
The choice of this manuscript as the award
winner was perhaps not based on craft as much as
spirit. But it is spirit that is often the most difficult
to achieve. One reader stated, “I want this book to
be published. I think it’s remarkable, and I think
it could do a tremendous amount of good in the
world.” One of the male readers made an even
12 Irreantum
more amazing statement: “I absolutely couldn’t get
this book out of my head. I found myself reevalu-
ating my own life, my own capacity for petty
cruelties. I have never in my life treated my wife a
hundredth as badly as Rick treats Laurel on every
page of the book. But I’ve been insensitive, I’ve
been callow, sure. What a remarkable book.”
Though this manuscript is much different from
earlier Marilyn Brown Novel Award winners—Jack
Harrell’s just-published excellent work Vernal Prom-
ises and the popular Mormonville by Jeff Call—it is a
work that can proudly take its place as the winner
for 2004.
Irreantum
I n t e r v i e w
Neil LaBute
A playwright, screenwriter, and director of films
and plays, Neil LaBute is perhaps the highest
internationally achieving contemporary artist who
identifies himself as a Mormon, albeit a disfel-
lowshipped one. According to LDSFilm.com, “His
religious affiliation has become one of many things
that baffle and intrigue interviewers and critics. The
raw and brutal nature of so many LaBute characters
is completely opposite the stereotyped image that many
entertainment writers have of Latter-day Saint people
and writing.”
LaBute burst onto the independent film scene in
1997 with his Sundance Film Festival sensation In
the Company of Men, a film adaptation of his play
by the same name that won an AML drama award
for its 1992 Brigham Young University production.
According to LDSFilm.com, “The film portrays two
coworkers who find themselves bored in a small city
on a business trip. To amuse themselves, they decide to
romance a young deaf woman and then do everything
possible to destroy her emotionally. Many who saw it
were shocked by the level of cruelty and inhumanity
displayed by the men in the film. Some branded the
picture as misogynistic, while others considered it pro-
foundly feminist in outlook.”
Since the success of In the Company of Men,
LaBute has directed film adaptations of several more
of his own plays: Your Friends and Neighbors (1998);
Bash: Latter-day Plays (2000), an earlier form of
which was published in the December 1995 issue
of Sunstone; and The Shape of Things (2003). In
addition, he has directed two major studio releases
based on the writing of others: Nurse Betty (2000)
and Possession (2002). According to LDSFilm.
com, Nurse Betty is the highest-grossing non-ani-
mated, non-documentary film made by a Latter-day
Saint director, surpassing Kieth Merrill’s Windwalker
(1980). (Six documentaries or animated films have
earned more.) Recent stage productions of LaB-
ute’s work have included The Distance from Here
(2002), The Mercy Seat (2002), and Merge (2003).
13 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Born in Detroit, LaBute grew up in the Spokane
area of Washington. After graduating from BYU with
a theater degree, he studied at the University of Kansas
and New York University. He attended the Sundance
Institute’s Playwrights’ Lab, and he received a scholar-
ship to study writing and drama at the Royal Academy
of London. He now lives with his family outside of
Chicago.
Y ou did your undergraduate work at BYU, and
during that time you joined the LDS church.
Yes. I ended up at BYU as if by magic. It was
really a kind of fluky thing. In some ways it’s hazy
enough that I almost don’t remember. In school, I
had an LDS counselor who knew about these non-
member scholarships at BYU, which wasn’t a place
I ever would have looked into. I had a few LDS
friends who were in the performing arts in high
school, so I’d had some exposure to the church. I
put in for one of those scholarships, and I got it. It
made the most sense at the time, so off I went to a
place where I really knew virtually no one.
You also did graduate work at BYU?
Yes, I came back six or seven years later and
worked on a Ph.D. I did the coursework, did the
research for my dissertation, all of that. But then,
after the first year, I got a job teaching, because I
already had an MFA from New York University. I
thought, Why not take the job rather than stay in
school and finish, only to be out looking for a job
again. So I took the teaching job and never did
finish the Ph.D., which is a shame. It’s one of those
things I wish I’d done.
So you voluntarily went back to BYU, and
they accepted you?
I think enough smoke had cleared. I probably
left more smoke, unfortunately, the second time I
was there for the one year than I did in the previous
four years.
Have those two influences of BYU and Mor-
monism had much effect on how you’ve been
shaped as a writer? Do you think you’d be dif-
ferent now without those two influences?
Undoubtedly I’d be different, both for good and
bad. All experience shapes you as a writer. I don’t
see myself as a Mormon writer, and yet I do, because
I’m a Mormon who’s writing. I’ve written only one
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
real piece of work that had anything to do, at least
in a specific way, with members of the church. Of
course, Bash was not really widely embraced by the
church, to put it nicely.
I’m not really one to do much of what people
ask me to do, and there’s certainly a sense of the
church not wanting me to write anything more
about members of the church. Fortunately, I
don’t feel any compulsion to do so. I only wrote
Bash because the idea came to me, and I used the
background of the church because it was at my
fingertips, rather than doing research on Catholics
or Christian Scientists or whatever else. I grew up
in a community church with a very general sense
of the Bible and faith, a more generalized Christian-
ity than the specificity of a church like the LDS
Church. So I used that in that piece to give some
specific credence to these characters and their situ-
ations. I tried to juxtapose what was essentially the
goodness of the church with these characters who
were not protected from making mistakes simply
by virtue of being a member of that church. That’s
really what the whole piece is about. But it wasn’t
seen as that so much as—well, I don’t think it was
ever really pointed at as “This is an indictment of
the church” so much as “This is just not very much
of a trumpet.” Moroni was in no danger of being
replaced off of the temple.
Did Bash have its roots during the BYU years?
Yes. During that second stay at BYU, I started
doodling away on something that would ultimately
become a portion of that.
Mormon playwright Eric Samuelsen made an
interesting comment about your work. He said,
“LaBute seems to see little need to dramatically
depict characters who seek light and growth
and repentance, but he seems to anticipate such
growth taking place in the audience.”
I think that’s a pretty fair statement, actually. It’s
a fairly accurate sense of my communion with an
audience. I’m essentially hopeful that they’ll take
something from what I’m showing. I’ve often said
that you can achieve goodness by showing bad. It
would be hard for me to believe that most people
walk away from something like Bash or Friends and
Neighbors or Company of Men saying, “I wish I could
14 Irreantum
act like those folks. They have a good way of going
about it.” I hope they’re getting my intent through
the force of the work, but that’s not necessarily
always the case.
You leave a lot of work for the audience to do.
Yes, during and after. That’s really the only way
I’m interested in doing it, in the same way that I’m
interested in that as an audience member. I like it
when I’m left with a pile in my lap that I have to
sort through on my own. I’m happy to raise ques-
tions, but I don’t have all the answers. Of course,
I can see another way of doing this, but I’m rarely
compelled to do it that way.
Have you recognized a lot of rewards from your
writing? What do you get out of it personally?
Rather than financially or anything like that, you
mean. I feel fulfillment every day. At its worst, it’s
a kind of drug. You kind of get a jones for it. You
really want to get your hands on a keyboard or pad
of paper because you feel the need. It’s an important
form of expression for me, but I don’t think of it as
therapy. This is not my place to exorcise demons.
It is work for me. It’s something I enjoy doing. It’s
pleasure as well as discipline. It serves a lot of func-
tions for me. I can’t imagine not doing it.
Do you write every day? You also direct films
and plays, so how big of role does the actual
writing take in your life?
It certainly has a platform every day. Writing
comes in so many shapes and sizes. Some people
are funny about rituals and habits, while for others
it’s a haphazard thing, which is probably truer of
someone like me. I don’t have a certain specific dis-
cipline to it. I don’t need to do it in the morning;
I don’t need to have a cup of coffee; I don’t need
to be facing east. And I don’t sit there and stare at
the screen, because invariably I lose those battles.
I can’t sit there and go, “Okay, be funny now, be
creative now, do something worthwhile now.” I
suppose there are times when I’ll type through
that, say to myself, “Maybe something will come
of this,” or I have a deadline and I need to produce
because I’ve been paid. When you first start out,
though, nobody gives a shit if you finish today or
a week from now. When you’re done, you turn it
in to whomever you think might be interested in
Irreantum
reading it—your cousin, open submission to a play
festival, whatever. School is good because writers
need deadlines; we’re a procrastinating bunch.
Even now, plenty of my writing is just dawdling
around while I’m supposed to be writing for some-
body else. In my head, I have ideas that I try to
get down on paper and see what comes of it. This
morning I was up at 5:30 writing, because that’s
when I woke up, and I wanted to take a look at
what I did last night. I’m not writing it for anyone,
but I have more outlets now, so I can figure that
a piece of work may have a life. I know enough
people and I’ve done enough work that there are
ample conduits to production or publication—a
sale, if you want to be as base as that. But that
doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
I think it was Oliver Stone who said, “I write
five pages a day even if I throw it out.” When I was
younger, I thought that must be the thing to do,
because Oliver Stone must know. But I came to a
point in my life where I thought it might be kind
of a hollow exercise if it’s just something I’m going
to throw out. What I’ve learned is that it’s only
as hollow as you make it. If you hold onto those
pages, who knows what might be in there: the germ
of an idea, a monologue that gets enveloped by
something else. And just the craft of it, the labor-
intensive act of sitting down and writing—you
can get better at it as you hone it. It falls into that
tradition of wheelwright and shipwright; there is
a kind of skill to it, a kind of craftsmanship that
comes from the doing of it. People get better at it,
including some students that I’ve had and continue
to have. The more they rewrite something or write
new things, the better they’re getting.
Do you have a file cabinet full of stuff?
I’ve got a fair amount of stuff that’s sitting there
in various states, whether “I’m still working on it”
or “I haven’t touched it for a while” or “This one’s
for later, when I don’t have anything else going on.”
That’s both film and theater, and even TV now.
And short stories, which I’ve begun writing.
Has anything happened on the TV front?
Only if you count Showtime’s production of
Bash, which I shot from a couple of different live
performances. I’ve had offers to do TV work. I did
15 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
one project with ABC, and they ultimately felt it
wasn’t for them because it was a little too much.
That was fine, because I got paid really well. It
was the kindest, softest, most nest-feathering rejec-
tion that I’ve had, so that was okay. The material
wasn’t wasted, because it found its way into other
things—portions of it, anyway. I continue to have
an interest in that skill and that medium, the abil-
ity to get out on a weekly or monthly basis to an
audience of that size.
The question of audience is what brought me
to film in the first place. I reached a crossroads
where I was teaching and getting produced in vari-
ous venues across the country, even in places like
England on occasion, but I was not the master
of my destiny. A company would contact me if
they wanted to do something. I’d had an agent
since NYU, but because I was just starting out
there was only so much they could do for me.
Whatever happened happened, and I was not able
to capitalize on it in any significant way. At some
point you want to have a testament of what you’re
doing by getting out to a larger audience. I’d seen
enough examples of people who were doing that
with film work, especially in independent film,
that it just made sense that that’s what I would do.
I went through an experience with a group of
people who were trying to make a film from one
of my plays. Although I’d been a film lover for a
long time, I’d never been introduced to the world
of independent filmmaking and how long it can
take to get a movie made. So I sat around with
these people who had an option on my work for
a year, and it was just unthinkable for me to sit
around that long. I was used to finding spaces that
plays I’d written or others had written that I wanted
to direct would fit into and doing a show that cost
only hundreds of dollars. The idea of movies is such
an extravagant thing. Something that cost even a
couple hundred thousand dollars was so beyond
my thinking.
Anyway, when they wanted to renew the option,
I felt I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I went off and
tried to make a movie on my own. That ultimately
led to In the Company of Men, which was not the
piece that had been optioned. I found some money,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
and that was the piece I felt I was most able to
do well with the amount I had. I wanted to do a
project that people would have to accept on its own
terms and not say, “If only he’d had five million
dollars, he could have really made a good movie.
He had a great story, but it looks like hell.” I think
it actually works very well the way it was done.
Let’s talk about your short stories. They’ve
appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere,
and you have a contract for publication of a
collection.
I have a great publication deal with Grove Press,
in that it’s whenever I damn well please, whenever
I get done with it. I often find that I write my
short stories on planes. They’ve all been relatively
short, two or three thousand words. So far, I really
don’t ever sit down and say, “Okay, now I’m going
to write a short story.” It’s more like I just get into
the right groove and one comes out, and eventually
there’ll be a collection. It could even be within the
next year.
Any Mormon elements popping up in your
short stories?
No.
Is it really different to write a story, as opposed
to a screenplay or a script?
It certainly is. The stories are not necessarily my
forte. I’ve enjoyed it because I enjoy exploring things.
It’s been fun, and I know I’ll keep at it. But it’s not
a thing that comes as naturally to me as, say, dia-
logue does. Even the prose that goes into a screen-
play is work for me because the mechanics of getting
people from place to place and describing places
are of less interest to me, in the same way that the
camera is not as interesting to me as the things that
are in front of the camera. Sitting down and writ-
ing a story is always more work than play, more so
than a film script will ever be. Not that I haven’t felt
some degree of personal success in doing it, because
that’s the only thing worth marking anyway—until
you win the Nobel Prize, and then you can mark it
by that. I can finish a story and go, “Yes, that feels
good, I like what I’ve done.” That said, short stories
will always be my second language.
Concerning HBO’s recent film production of
Angels in America, do you have any opinions
16 Irreantum
on Tony Kushner’s use of Mormon elements and
characters?
I was approached to direct the film, and I chose
not to. It was right around the time of my disfel-
lowshipment for Bash, and I thought, “Well, that’s
probably not the best move.”
Kushner himself calls Angels in America a sort of
fantasia. The Mormons are treated in the same fan-
tastical way as everybody else. Kushner understands
that his Mormon characters are just human beings;
they’re just people who are capable of great good
and of making mistakes. There’s nothing wrong
with that sort of portrayal. If the church can’t stand
up to that kind of scrutiny, then there’s something
amiss. But I don’t think Kushner is pointing a
finger and saying, “There’s something wrong with
that religion.” I may be wrong about that, but it’s
certainly not my feeling, and it’s certainly not what
I was doing with Bash. What I did see him doing
right was underscoring that we’re all in this together
and there’s just no way around the idea that this is
work, this thing called life. We must be constantly
vigilant because it’s so easy to stumble, and if you
do stumble then you hopefully right yourself, pick
yourself up. It’s as simple and profound as that.
Have any of the recent Mormon films made it
onto your radar?
I’ve had a couple of conversations with Mitch
Davis, who did the missionary film that takes place
in the Pacific [The Other Side of Heaven]. I thought
he did good work there. It seemed to have a wider
appeal than most things written by so-called Mor-
mon writers. It was a very earnest, straightforward
film. I thought he handled it quite well.
I recently saw Brigham City, and it made me
hopeful, not just for Mormon filmmakers—I’m not
sure that term does anything but marginalize—but
for filmmakers as a whole. I thought Dutcher found
a terrific way of integrating faith into his narrative
without overburdening it. The notions and rituals
of the community became a valid and interesting
part of the whole without ever feeling forced or
manipulative. Religion has been a part of films for
nearly as long as the medium has existed, but it’s
not always very well integrated when it comes to
films made by Latter-day Saints. I found Dutcher’s
use of Mormonism, however, highly effective and
Irreantum
nicely restrained—part of the message rather than
the message itself.
If the film has a failing, it is the same one that
I see in many independent features: the level of
talent in front of the camera. Some of the work in
the film is very fine, and it was a treat to see people
I knew years ago at school up on screen. Dutcher
seems to me a careful and gifted filmmaker, but
considering him as an actor I found myself less
than moved. I think he takes a gamble, holding
his own character’s emotions in check until the last
few scenes of the film, but it doesn’t pay off for me.
There is obviously a great deal of back story at play
here, but I didn’t find his performance providing
enough power in the first two-thirds of the film to
compensate for his reserve. What is meant to be
depth seems merely emotionless. I couldn’t help
but imagine what an actor like Ed Harris or Bill
Paxton might’ve done with this role. Still, I felt
overall that the film was an enjoyable one, and it
was great to see something this ambitious and suc-
cessful come out of an independent production,
Mormon or not. I expect good things from Dutcher,
if this is any indication of his gifts.
A lot of Mormon filmmakers want to achieve
a crossover. The example often cited is My Big
Fat Greek Wedding. Does that line of thinking
have any potential?
Of course. Who would have guessed that some-
thing like Fiddler on the Roof had crossover poten-
tial? But why wouldn’t it? Everything in it is
specific, but when it touches on something univer-
sal, that’s when people begin to notice and reach
out to it. Why should Fiddler be any more univer-
sal than something written by a Mormon about
Mormons? As far as Greek Wedding, I didn’t think
it was particularly good. Could that same kind
of phenomenal popularity happen for a Mormon
film or play? Of course it could. My heartfelt hope
would be that it’s actually good rather than makes a
lot of money. When we start to equate quality with
money, that gets dicey.
After the Bash situation, do you think you’ll ever
write something else with Mormon elements?
I don’t know. I’ve certainly been asked not to,
quite specifically. There was no sense of “You can
17 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
write some more about Mormons if you like, as
long as they’re good ones.” It was just “We’d like
you to steer clear of them.” So far, that’s been fine,
because I haven’t had any plans for additional Mor-
mon characters. Doing that would be a real decla-
ration of something—I’m not sure exactly what.
So if that happens, it will be a monumental choice
that I’m making. I see no particular need to make
that choice, because I have no Mormon stories in
my head right now.
There are many things I’ve written where you
could say, “Gee, that could have been a Mormon
character.” In fact, a Salt Lake critic asked about In
the Company of Men, “Are you making a statement
about the church? These guys are in white shirts
and ties, and they’re very patriarchal.” My response
was, “I hadn’t thought about that, but now that
you say it, let me think about that.” You don’t
always know what’s filtering its way into your own
work.
In bad writing, characters trumpet who they
are. There are a lot of people in life who do that
too. Others never mention their membership, and
I don’t think they’re any less of a missionary. They
do it by their example of who they are, not by overt
statements.
Was the church discipline for Bash a local
action or was it triggered out of Salt Lake?
I think what happened is that some reviews
started to come in. Before that, I’d kind of been
flying under the wire, in terms of people knowing
who I was. I was a relative newcomer to the national
scene. When Bash came around, it got a lot of
publicity. Calista Flockhart and the cast were trum-
peted by Time magazine and USA Today. Evidently
it filtered back to Salt Lake, and they said, “Hey, we
need to take a look at this.”
Do you think you’ll be allowed back into fel-
lowship any time soon?
I don’t know. As in most things, I remain hope-
ful—skeptical, but hopeful.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
E s s a y
Problematic Moralist:
Neil LaBute and the Via Negativa
By John-Charles Duffy
C ritics and reviewers often refer to Neil LaBute
as a “moralist.” This will seem odd to many
Latter-day Saints, for whom the moral quality of
LaBute’s art is dubious at best. LDS viewers are typi-
cally offended by the profanity, strong sexual con-
tent, and dark tone in LaBute’s writing; it has even
been suggested that LaBute’s work “enacts evil.”
Indeed, LaBute has been disfellowshipped by church
leaders who felt that his art called into question his
commitment to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.1
Non-LDS viewers have also expressed doubt about
the morality of LaBute’s art. Still, my sense of the
literature is that non-LDS critics are more likely
than LDS ones to regard LaBute as a moralist. Why
is that, and what does it tell us about the prevailing
LDS understanding of morality in literature?
As I see it, there are essentially two approaches
to conveying moral messages through literature.
Borrowing terms from mysticism, I dub these two
approaches the via positiva and the via negativa.
The via positiva is to represent the rewards of virtue;
the via negativa is to represent the unhappy conse-
quences of vice.
Latter-day Saints show a decided preference for
the via positiva. In part, this is a manifestation of
what Gordon B. Hinckley calls “the spirit of opti-
mism”—the conviction that we should “stop seeking
out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight . . .
that as we go through life we ‘accentuate the positive’
. . . that each of us turn from the negativism that
so permeates our society . . . that we speak of one
another’s virtues more than we speak of one anoth-
er’s faults.”2 It is noteworthy, in this regard, that vir-
tually all the films we call the new LDS cinema have
been comedies or at least upbeat dramas. Tragedy is
not to the LDS taste, because it swims upstream of
the spirit of optimism; it’s too “negative.”
The Saints’ preference for the via positiva is also
bound up in anxiety about the consequences of
representing evil. LDS discourse about the media
18 Irreantum
frequently highlights the danger of being exposed
to tempting, corrupting, or contaminating influ-
ences. It’s not uncommon to hear Latter-day Saints
express concern that profane language or immodest
images will become permanently imprinted on their
minds, and Saints may go to some lengths to shield
themselves from these influences (in their selection
of friends, books, music, films, etc.). Paradoxically,
the Saints’ “spirit of optimism” coexists with a sense
of being under constant spiritual assault.
In this context, representing evil, even for the
purpose of condemning evil, comes to be seen as
dangerous. An artist who protests that her charac-
ters use profane language because that’s how people
in the world speak is likely to run up against the
rejoinder that people shouldn’t use such language,
and therefore an author or actor shouldn’t use such
language. Many Latter-day Saints draw no distinc-
tion between profanity or immodesty as part of a
dramatic representation and profanity or immod-
esty in reality: the bottom line is that profane words
are being uttered, bodies are being immodestly
exposed, and these things are inherently immoral.3
The via negativa, then, is problematic for Lat-
ter-day Saints because in order to condemn vice it
must depict vice—that is, must model vice—which
the Saints are inclined to regard as a morally risky
venture. The via positiva avoids this problem: it is
the safe road for the LDS moralist.
LaBute, however, prefers the via negativa. Over
and over, he depicts the unhappiness that follows
cruelty—not the monumental, epic cruelty of war
or genocide, but the cruelty of everyday life, the
cruelty that we enact in relationships with cowork-
ers, friends, and lovers. Telling cruel jokes about
someone you claim as a friend. Going along with a
cruel game for the sake of being accepted. Making
fun of someone with a handicap. Dissing a coworker
behind his back. Sabotaging a friend’s work in
order to get his job. Belittling your partner in front
of others. Emotionally blackmailing your partner.
Cheating on your partner. Cheating with your best
friend’s partner. Sexual humiliation. Objectifica-
tion. Gay-bashing. Rape.
In LDS terminology, LaBute presents humanity
in its “lost and fallen state” (1 Ne. 10:6). In a LaBute
film,4 there are no good guys. Even the characters
Irreantum
for whom we feel the most sympathy—the ones
who act more out of neediness than malice—choose
to act in ways that are insensitive or duplicitous,
with invariably deleterious results. And there’s
always one character in a LaBute film who is so
utterly self-absorbed, so utterly “past feeling” (Moro.
9:20), that it takes your breath away. LaBute’s films
bear witness to a principle laid out in the Book
of Mormon: that left to our own inertia, without
the intervention of the Atonement, human beings
“become devils, angels to a devil . . . to remain with
the father of lies, in misery like unto himself ” (2
Ne. 9:9).5
For many critics and viewers, this moral dimen-
sion to LaBute’s work is perfectly evident—though
not all regard it as praiseworthy. One reviewer
complains that “LaBute’s particular preoccupation
with morality smacks of the ’80s TV evangelists.
. . . You’d think he’d have outgrown these either/or
dichotomies, these notions of bad or good, naughty
or nice. . . . It’s all, like, so last century.”6
Not everyone, however, sees a moral message
in LaBute’s work. For example, while it seemed
quite clear to me that LaBute intended his audi-
ence to condemn the vicious sexism displayed
by characters in his first film, In the Company of
Men, this was far from clear to other viewers; as a
result, LaBute has been haunted by accusations of
misogyny. Similarly, I’ve been surprised—and dis-
mayed—to find the producer of Your Friends and
Neighbors describe that film as “wickedly funny,” or
to find one of the film’s actresses hold up the brutal
dialogue as a “refreshing” example of folks being
“honest” with one another.7 How, I wonder, can
these people have so obviously missed the point?
I believe LaBute when he insists that his films
and plays, though “very severe in their portrayals of
people,” nevertheless “have a staunch moral point
of view.”8 But the fact that viewers have reacted so
differently to his work suggests that his via negativa
is liable to ambiguity. LaBute himself has acknowl-
edged this problem.9 At this point, some LDS critics
would fault LaBute on the grounds that an author
bears responsibility for misinterpretations of his work.
I myself—motivated, admittedly, by some malice—
would like to ask such critics how they feel about
the parables of Jesus or the Apocalypse of John.
19 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 LaBute realizes that his passion for the via
negative—his conviction that “great good can come
from showing bad”10—puts him out of step with
prevailing LDS attitudes. A church spokesman in
Los Angeles, commenting on the release of In the
Company of Men, reaffirmed the LDS mainstream’s
preference for the via positiva when he said that he
hoped LaBute “would take his plaudits from this
film to do something a bit more on the positive
scale. . . . We would hope that [Latter-day Saints]
going into the [film] industry would look to accen-
tuate the positive in life.”11
LDS critic Susan Elizabeth Howe has proposed
that writers put their talents to best use when
they “create artistic images of people responding
to conflict without either becoming victims or
resorting to the violence that makes others victims[.]
. . . Would it not be useful to have powerful stories
to teach us other possibilities?”12 There’s much to
be said for Howe’s proposal. It would be morally
useful if LaBute were to imagine positive—but
believable, not facile—responses to the cruelties
he depicts in his art. On the other hand, perhaps
LaBute isn’t in a position to do that. Perhaps that’s
not the gift given unto him (D&C 46:11).
For me, watching a LaBute film is a visceral,
humbling experience. It makes me reflect on the
cruelties I enact in my own relationships. It makes
me want to be better. Presumably, that’s how LaBute
wants people to react to his work; it’s what moral-
ists hope that the via negativa will accomplish.
LaBute occupies an ironic position. Hailed
as “the most exciting American dramatist of his
generation”13 and often compared to film giant
Stanley Kubrick, LaBute is the LDS filmmaker
who has been most successful at reaching non-
LDS audiences—at speaking their language. Yet he
is a misfit within his own community. That irony
may be inevitable. Perhaps someday the LDS com-
munity will come to view LaBute’s via negativa as
a legitimate gift that can serve constructive moral
ends; but that seems unlikely. LaBute will prob-
ably remain a marginal, problematic figure for the
Saints: a Mormon moralist in the eyes of outsiders,
an alien at home.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Notes
1. Specifically, LaBute’s stake leaders objected to his
creating LDS characters who act violently, in Bash: Lat-
terday Plays. For information about LaBute’s disciplinary
council, see “Mister Nasty,” telegraph.co.uk, April 20,
2002, available at www.telegraph.co.uk; Sean P. Means,
“Neil LaBute Melds Stage and Screen,” Salt Lake Tri-
bune, May 16, 2003: D1.
2. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Words of the Prophet: The
Spirit of Optimism,” New Era (July 2001): 4–6.
3. Hence, for example, the case of the LDS drama
student who sued the University of Utah for religious
discrimination on the grounds that using profanity, even
in character, would violate her moral standards.
4. I am referring to the films that LaBute wrote as
well as directed: In the Company of Men, Your Friends and
Neighbors, and The Shape of Things.
5. At least one non-LDS critic has recognized the
thematic connection to the Fall, noting that LaBute’s
work “tends to show man as a fallen creature—in his
most inglorious and ignoble state” (“Mister Nasty”).
6. Lisa Rosman, “The Shape of Things, Indeed,” The
Brooklyn Rail (June–July 2003), available online at www.
thebrooklynrail.org/film/june03/shapeofthings.html.
7. Mary Dickson, “Who’s Afraid of Neil LaBute?” Salt
Lake City Weekly, September 21, 1998, available online at
weeklywire.com/ww/09-21-98/slc_story.html.
8. Quoted in Scott Timburg, “Who’s Afraid of Neil
LaBute?” Dallas Observer, August 20, 1998, available
online at www.dallasobserver.com/extra/labute4.html.
9. “If you like what you see, it’s a training film. If not,
it’s cautionary.” Quoted in Dickson.
10. Quoted in Timburg.
11. Ibid.
12. Susan Elizabeth Howe, “The Moral Imagination,”
Sunstone (December 1995): 61, 62.
13. “Mister Nasty.”
20 Irreantum
 E s s a y
Why Crossover Is a Dirty Word
By Jongiorgi Enos
C rossover is not a word that most mothers would
be shocked to hear coming out of their kids’
mouths. Well, actually, I suppose it is. Not because
of my claim that it’s a dirty word (wouldn’t that
make them want to say it?), but because, well, most
kids wouldn’t know what it means. Unfortunately,
not knowing what something means almost never
stops an adult from talking about a topic. And in
this, kids are a whole lot smarter than we are.
Hence the problem at hand.
It is almost impossible to have a conversation
about LDS film these days without hearing the
word crossover bandied about. The word is usually
spoken quite proudly and with some sense of a
soothsayer’s prediction of the future.
“This film,” we are told, “will have lots of cross-
over appeal.”
That sounds good in print, I guess.
And when said in an interview with a confident
air, it makes you look pretty cool. As if the people
saying such things had any idea what they were
really talking about.
Well, folks, they don’t, and their films won’t, and
I’m here to tell you: crossover is a dirty word.
The Argument
O kay, so maybe it’s not the concept of crossover
itself that LDS artists don’t understand. As a
concept, crossover is actually rather simple.
But my supposition is that it is the implications
of the concept of crossover, as well as the actual
factors that go into the marketing prediction of a
commercial crossover reaction, that very few artists
really understand. That part is rather complex.
Furthermore, inaccurate predictions regarding
crossover can have devastating effects on the com-
mercial viability of a product. Even worse than
that, temptation to make artistic choices based on
what the artist thinks will create a so-called “cross-
over product” may have a devastating effect on the
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overall artistic quality of the work itself. Which, if
true, would be the dirtiest effect of all of being in
love with the word crossover.
My argument is that we’d all be better off if we
stopped talking so much about crossover and focused
more directly on just making great films. If you
want to make a crossover film, why don’t you just
make a mainstream film?
And lest you authors (already disgruntled by an
issue focusing on film topics) feel out of place, I
should add now that this topic has great relevancy
for writers as well and is as much a factor in the
marketing of books as of film.
So first, let’s cover the simple part.
Crossover Defined
T he world of marketing (film or otherwise) loves
the concept called niche marketing or market-
ing to a target audience. “I’ve never met a niche I
didn’t like,” marketers are frequently heard saying.
A niche is any segment of the market that can
be identified and segregated, about which conclu-
sions can be made, toward which marketing can be
directed.
Action movies, for example, are typically targeted
toward a younger male audience. Therefore, you
buy advertising in media that is also younger-male
oriented.
Simple.
The more precisely identifiable a product’s niche,
the easier it is to market. This doesn’t mean it’s bet-
ter (it may in fact be very small indeed), but it is
easier. That’s why marketers like a niche. And they
don’t care what the niche is: Gay films, porn films,
Mormon films, films about plumbing in Norway.
Who do we sell it to? Where do they live? That’s
all the marketer wants to know.
Crossover is a term which means that a product
targeted for a particular niche happens to also appeal
to a portion of other niches outside of the target
audience.
For example, romance movies usually appeal
to older females. But let’s say you have one that
for some odd reason also appeals to males to some
degree (Cold Mountain, maybe, because of the battle
scenes), and they go see it in greater numbers than
21 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
you expect. Or you’ve got an action movie that has
a hunk in it girls like to watch, and lots of them go
see it in excess of your expectations. That’s cross-
over.
Again: Simple.
So why is this a dirty word? Sounds like a good
thing. A product selling even more widely than you
expect seems like something you’d want. Right?
Couldn’t you even plan for it in advance?
Actually, I myself am currently involved in pro-
ducing and writing a film specifically calculated to
appeal to a number of market segments. We have
something for the guys, something for the gals. But
we aren’t kidding ourselves: it’s still just an action
movie, and the average fifty-year-old female is not
going to give a hoot about it. And we don’t pretend
they will. Nothing has universal appeal. It doesn’t
have to: you niche-market it.
But why then, you may ask, should we not add
mainstream elements to our LDS films, just in the
same way you have added female-appeal elements
to your otherwise testosterone-driven action film?
And this is where my argument gets delicate.
My sense is, and I will present these points more
fully below, that the LDS market, while attempt-
ing to seem mainstream in its PR efforts, really is
not, and there are sufficiently exclusive elements in
a genuinely LDS story that it will never naturally
cross over to the mainstream. Attempting to make
it do so will actually alienate both audiences.
Jumping the Gun
O ften in life, as well as in art and business,
“getting the cart in front of the horse” causes
problems. And it is this which is at the basis of my
concern with the seductive appeal of LDS film-
makers always talking about crossover.
Until LDS filmmakers have mastered the art and
business of creating a product loved and consumed
by their target audience, how can they be concerned
with creating a crossover product? Doesn’t one come
before the other? From any and all indications, we
have certainly not mastered the first—not by a long
shot.
The sociological factors which create broad audi-
ence appeal are intensely complex and extremely
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
difficult to predict. Entertainers preparing product
for mass consumption (even if the mass in question
is a fairly small niche) are at great pains to make
predictions about audience receptivity beforehand,
and may be distracted by including or excluding
subject elements in anticipation of an unpredictable
crossover factor—actually hurting the product at
the outset.
That’s my thesis: that all the talk about crossover
is jumping the gun.
Thinking too much about crossover before the
fact, anticipating crossover that may not exist, bas-
ing a marketing plan on crossover as an essential
element, in my opinion, are problematic situations,
and it is this that I am seeing and hearing among
LDS film producers.
I think it is also one of the many reasons why
LDS cinema is basically dying on the vine as we
speak. But more on that later.
Now let’s cover the complex part: a primer on
marketing, and some background on how incredi-
bly complicated predicting niche market and cross-
over reactions really is, and why I will intimately
argue for a reduction in concern with the crossover
factor in LDS product, be it film or literature or
otherwise.
Finding Your Niche
J ust about any category or combination of cate-
gories can be called a niche. Most marketing sur-
veys poll for such major categories as gender, age,
race, education, income, profession, and geographic
location. Subcategories might include religious affili-
ation, buying habits, hobbies, club memberships,
political leanings, and even sexual orientation. If
you are a single black college-educated gay male
under thirty living in an urban area with an income
over $100,000 a year, I am certainly going to put
you into a different marketing category than a fifty-
three-year-old married white high-school-educated
Mormon mother of nine with a total household
income of $46,000 living in Hurricane, Utah. So
that’s a niche.
What is surprising is that you really can make
some generalizations about any given niche. It seems
inherently insulting (and certainly not politically
22 Irreantum
correct) to make blanket statements about any given
category or group. To say “Blacks this” or “Women
that” is to invite attacks of racism or sexism. And
yet, our multicultural, all-encompassing world aside,
you really can, for marketing purposes, make a lot
of generalizations. “Teenagers,” “Women over forty,”
“Men between eighteen and twenty-five,” “Ital-
ian-Americans in New York,” “Utah Mormons” vs.
“California Mormons” (vs. “Mexican Mormons”
vs. “Mormons of the Congo,” etc., etc.) are all
identifiable groups about which certain things can
be said.
Things like “Asian women over forty driving
Lexus automobiles in city traffic are a danger to
others” or “The French have big egos” probably
have no relevance. But something like “Mormons
do not consume vast quantities of wine, but Catho-
lics have been known to imbibe a tumbler or two,”
if true, has actual marketing relevance. If I had a
way of knowing that Salt Lake City was fifty per-
cent Mormon and Mexico City was ninety percent
Catholic, where do you think I might be better off
spending money on a big media blitz selling my
new wine?
Duh.
But it’s not always that simple. Distinctions get
more difficult the broader the category and the
fewer the qualifiers. For example, the statement
“Women usually [fill in the blank]” will be much
more difficult to fill in with any degree of accuracy
than, say, the statement “College-educated women
over forty-five living in urban areas with median
incomes over $50,000 usually [fill in the blank].”
The other extreme also causes problems in
prediction. Very small groups may have too small
a sample size to be able to draw reasonable predic-
tions. LDS audiences large enough to get a sample
under ideal conditions have thus far defied our
ability, without costly formal surveys, to predict
moviegoing behaviors. Getting information about
any given group is difficult and expensive.
And there are always exceptions. This is people
we are talking about, not cattle.
Once you get your data, there may or may not
be a recognizable pattern within that group. For
example, preteen males may always show a response
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to ads with bikinis in them; and over-forty females
may spike sixty-seven percent of the time Tom
Selleck is on screen. But neither group may show
any recognizable pattern in connection to books
on physics. Or, that is to say, both groups may hate
books on physics equally as much, so attempting
to sell books on physics to either group may be
futile—even if you have girls in swimsuits reading
these books, or even if you make the case that read-
ing books on physics will make Tom Selleck show
up on your doorstep.
(Incidentally, the one time my wife was in the
presence of Tom Selleck, books on physics had
nothing to do with it. It was because we had lent
books about the history of the American West to
his screenwriter that we got invited to the premiere.
But it was only because the Lord very much loves
my wife that she ended up alone with him in the
elevator.)
Getting the Word Out
E ven once you’ve figured out a niche, and iden-
tified a pattern of behavior within the niche
you want to exploit, figuring out how to send your
message to that given group poses its own set of dif-
ficulties (and one which LDS cinema has far from
conquered). Let’s say that I really do know that
Mormon moviegoers (an oxymoron in itself—which
I’ll get to in a moment) really do like movies with
funny monkeys in them. Luckily, I have a movie
with a funny monkey in it that I’d like to get Mor-
mon moviegoers to come see. How do I get my
message to that target audience?
What I’m trying to do is target a niche within
a niche. The overall niche is Mormons. At first
glance, that’s pretty easy to find. Utah, Idaho,
Arizona. Okay, but then I have the niche within:
those among Mormons who are also moviegoers.
How do I reach them? Finding an affordable and
efficient marketing campaign to target my specific
audience is difficult and costly—two words which
are usually the opposite of affordable and efficient.
And the picture gets even more difficult when
we realize that our initial conclusion that Mormons
are in Utah is actually flawed. Utah may boast a
23 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
population that is fifty percent Mormon, but it
only boasts a population of about two million.
That’s only about a million Mormons, and heck,
I happen to know that there are at least five mil-
lion in the U.S. at large. Do I abandon my first
goal—Mormon moviegoers—and instead focus on
a niche within a niche within a niche: Mormon
moviegoers along the Wasatch? If so, that drasti-
cally reduces my total potential market but makes
it easier to get the word out. Heck, one billboard at
the Point of the Mountain with the words “Leaving
Soon” ought to do the trick.
How do I really target Mormon moviegoers—all
of them? The highest total number of Mormons in
the United States actually live in California, but
they are diffused within a huge population. And
it’s a very expensive place to buy ads. And they have
that Terminator for governor, which is scary, etc.,
etc. My tongue-in-cheek tone is in reference to the
fact that LDS filmmakers have never yet success-
fully marketed outside of the Intermountain West
and have had particular problems with the Califor-
nia market, never really cracking the golden nut.
And yet we are constantly and prematurely talk-
ing about crossover?
We can’t sell to our own people yet, much less
Hollywood!
But I’ll get to more about that in a moment.
The Other Side of Heaven team (so I heard) spent
about three million dollars to send fliers to Mormons
all over the U.S. hoping to attract moviegoers, and it
basically worked: they got a four million dollar box
office, the biggest in LDS cinema to date. But that
marketing plan proved too costly in the long run,
reducing profitability even while it increased their
box office. The Book of Mormon Movie team spent
significantly less on a grassroots Internet campaign,
which saved them money and seemed creative—but
in the end, that plan did not prove sufficiently effec-
tive (a defect which may yet be remedied in DVD
sales, but that has yet to be seen).
The Science of Surveying
I hope the complexity of the picture is starting
to come clear. Marketers are not just ravenous
wolves getting ever more sophisticated about how
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
they seduce their chosen prey. I mean, they are, but
they are not just that.
Marketers are scientists, many with degrees in
sociology, probability and statistics, data processing,
and analysis. The fact that Hollywood can predict
as much about moviegoing habits as it does (errors
with a plus-or-minus factor of about twenty per-
cent) is phenomenal—from a scientific standpoint.
For three years I sat around every Thursday morn-
ing with my boss preparing the weekly prediction
memo for the studio heads, saying how much we
thought every movie opening that weekend would
make. And we were always really close. Hey, if soci-
ologists could predict mass reactions to any given
topic as well as we could predict moviegoing, we
wouldn’t need the Psychic Hotline anymore.
But it takes an astonishing amount of data to lay
the foundation upon which is built such successful
levels of what is, in effect, educated guesswork. Yes,
there is the guess part, but there is also the educated
part. In order to begin to make such predictions
and to start identifying market niches and how
to target them, an inordinate amount of research
is required. Tens of thousands of surveys, both
telephone and man-on-the-street, as well as test
screenings, commercial tests, title tests, and a host
of other research programs are conducted on an
ongoing basis, day in and day out. Questionnaires
have to be carefully prepared (asking the wrong
question at the wrong time can skew or “coach”
the response, falsifying data), then surveys patiently
conducted (only about twenty-five percent of
people asked will actually complete a survey). The
data has to be crunched and collated, and then the
collated data has to be analyzed.
Thomas Baggaley, co-head of LDSfilm.com,
worked for a time with the Pine Company in L.A.,
the data-processing firm that crunched the survey
data for the National Research Group (for whom
I worked), which then did the analysis and inter-
pretation. I was part of the team that did question-
naires and then wrote analytical reports once the
data came back.
What I’m trying to say is that this is a
multimillion-dollar-a-year industry—just serving
the seven major studios! Independents could rarely
24 Irreantum
afford such work, and there is nothing, absolutely
nothing even remotely comparable from which to
draw any conclusions regarding LDS cinema. The
LDS market simply has no machinery in place to
begin making large market predictions, nor is there
adequate data for even the most cautious of edu-
cated guesses. Thomas Baggaley and Preston Hunter
are the closest thing we’ve got, and LDSfilm.com
assembles and attempts to analyze what data there
is, but the science is, as of yet, incredibly slim. (I’m
sorry, but I have to laugh at most of Preston’s pre-
dictions—but in a nice way.)
Again what I’m trying to say is, we have abso-
lutely no idea what we are talking about if we make
broad market predictions regarding Mormon movie-
goers. How do I know? Because I know as much
or more about this stuff than just about anybody
working in LDS cinema to date, and I know I’m
clueless, so I know everybody else has to be at least
as clueless as I am. It’s a comforting thought, really,
how we are all just clueless together.
But this is not a time when being right feels
good. It feels terrible to be a prophet of doom who
is proven true. When I overheard some marketing
guys making certain predictions about Pride &
Prejudice, I panicked and told them to cool it; there
was no way it was ever going to make what they
had hoped. But even my predictions turned out
to be very wrong, and I am stunned by the lack of
movement.
What has not stunned me at all, however—and
this is something I have been saying for months
now—is that it is absolutely idiotic, with a market
so slight, to be competing with each other head-to-
head in our release dates. No studio under heaven
would release a major tent-pole action movie on
the same weekend that another studio was releas-
ing in the same genre. Why compete for the same
niche market head to head? It never happens in
Hollywood; the studios are too savvy. Another one
of my jobs at National Research Group was com-
piling all the release dates from all the studios up
to eighteen months in advance so that they could
all compare and see when they might be competing
too closely with another film for the same niche.
They always moved similar niche market films
Irreantum
away from each other. In the crowded summer
season, sometimes that means only a week apart,
but for big releases that is often enough.
Not so for LDS film. I have been saying that
LDS films are slow-moving. They need legs. They
need time to build word of mouth and grow.
Scheduling films one month apart is not enough.
Last year we had four films on screens competing
for the same very thin dollar, and it didn’t work.
Now the same thing is happening again. Two are
bumping shoulders, soon to be three, and the effect
on the box office is devastating.
Sadly, there have not been a lot of surprises,
even without market surveys. I told Jerry Molen
that The Other Side of Heaven was unrecoupable,
at which he shrugged. Even Larry Miller, an intel-
ligent businessman who has managed to parlay his
various business ventures into a multimillion-dollar
empire, exhibited complete stupefaction in the face
of the economic intricacies and realities of indepen-
dent film and continues even now to make costly
investment errors in that regard.
Clearly this is not easy stuff.
Ultimately, market prediction is the science of
educated guesses. Hollywood is good at it; we have
a long way to go. However, I’d like to now indulge
in a little generalizing and guesswork about the
LDS audiences to zoom in a little more on the chal-
lenges facing LDS filmmakers, challenges which
we may not be able to overcome before the market
collapses.
Mormon Moviegoers: An Oxymoron
I was entertained to read recently some Salt Lake
area critic’s comment that Utahns are great mov-
iegoers. Based on national definitions, I don’t think
this is really the case—certainly not in comparison
to other major market segments.
Hollywood basically defines a moviegoer as
someone who attends a first-run movie at a theater
at least twice in the last month. Only about one-
third of America can be counted as moviegoers.
Approaching the subsegment of Utah Mormons,
however, a very different picture emerges. Mor-
mons, like many conservative religious groups, have
codified religious standings regarding entertainment
25 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
in general and have even, at certain times, had
specific prohibitions with regard to film ratings
preached over the pulpit. Demographically, Mor-
mons in the American West (the only niche within
the niche to have been successfully marketed to
with respect to film to any degree) tend to be pre-
dominately white, middle to upper-middle class,
politically conservative, well-educated people.
They tend to spend more time discussing, debat-
ing, thinking, and/or complaining about popular
entertainment than the national average, but in
many ways their consumption of popular enter-
tainment follows national norms exactly, including
(to a degree which their local ecclesiastical leaders
might find distressing) the consumption of R-rated
films, which are eschewed by much of the same
white/conservative demographic nationally.
In one category, however, the Utah market dif-
fers notably from the national average: they tend
to spend less for their popular entertainment, even
though they have just about as much of it. (LDS
book publishers have long known this; they can
almost never charge retail prices in keeping with
national publishers’ suggested retail prices for hard-
cover books.) They are video/DVD buyers, which
has saved some LDS films financially, but without
a strong box office most of these films will be
impossible to sell in overseas markets, which often
account for fifty percent of a film’s potential—but
not for us. Strangely, some of our DVDs are priced
higher than the national average, which is bad
marketing and destined to fail. And one thing
seems very clear: Utah moviegoers are not clas-
sic moviegoers (meaning twice-a-month, first-run
ticket buyers); they are wait-for-the-video movie-
goers and wait-for-the-dollar-movie moviegoers to
a greater degree than the national average.
Without serious survey data, all of these state-
ments are guesswork indeed, but take one very
simple example, easy to see. Houston, the fourth
or fifth most populated market in the US, has only
two or three dollar-movie exhibitors, all of which
tend to be in fringe market areas, with run-down
amenities and less than the market average clientele.
The Wasatch Front, however, with less than half the
population base, supports half a dozen second-run
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
movie houses within a forty-some-odd-mile area,
all of which do a thriving business, frequently sell-
ing out shows on weekends and special half-price
Tuesdays. Utah is the land of the cheap date.
Commercially speaking, then, Mormons are not
really moviegoers. It’s not quite as bad as opening a
theater chain in the Amish country of Pennsylva-
nia, but it is below the national average. But that is
just commercially speaking. There is a much more
subtle and unpredictable factor as well.
A Theory of Mormon Social
Embarrassment
T he theory I propose in this section may be divi-
sive, even offensive, to some. It may also be
wrong. Educated guessing, remember? But I don’t
think anyone who has spent much time attempting
to market the arts—music, books, film, dance, the-
ater, painting, anything—within the LDS market
will call me out as being far wrong.
Sadly, Latter-day Saints sometimes exhibit a kind
of deep and almost subliminal embarrassment, a
kind of inferiority complex, which intensifies a kind
of exclusionary “us vs. them” mentality which has
fluctuated like a tide throughout our history. Ini-
tially isolationist out of a survivalist necessity, the
oppressed early Mormons have only slowly warmed
to our modern institutional posture of almost total
openness. “Be in the world but not of it” continues
to alter its meaning, but many, many lifelong Mor-
mons (and even more so among the historically
most inculcated Wasatch Front) continue to have
deeply held isolationist views. So engrained and
defensive is this subliminal posture that even trained
public relations personnel still sometimes bristle
in press conferences when asked questions they
consider embarrassing or inflammatory. There are
a considerable number of subjects that Mormons
just don’t want to talk about, don’t want to think
about, don’t want others (or even each other) to
know about. There is a long tradition of “don’t ask,
don’t tell” in the church regarding certain topics, a
tradition that is less of an active institutional sup-
pression than a categorical attitude of “if we ignore
it, it will go away.” While the “that was then, this
26 Irreantum
is now” attitude is at heart a Christian one when
it pertains to allowing someone to change and not
dwell on his past, it nonetheless causes problems at
an institutional level when members are still trying
to deal with issues, such as historical racism (among
others), and can’t get anyone to talk about it.
Mormons are deeply embarrassed (to the point
of confusion) by many topics, and, ironically,
many of these topics are among the most dramatic
subjects of our history and therefore natural fodder
for artists and scholars, many of whom have felt
shunned for producing works which confront the
unofficial taboos. The subject does not even have
to be polygamy or Mountain Meadows. Richard
Dutcher’s Brigham City received an astonishing wave
of criticism for portraying a sacrament ceremony
at a crucial dramatic juncture; a veritable wave of
outrage reached the offices of Zion Films express-
ing disapproval, even citing supposed copyright law
and scripture! And this despite the fact that the reli-
gious ceremony included in the film is performed
ritually every single week in every public meet-
inghouse of the church, each one of which clearly
states on its placard: “Visitors Welcome.” Clearly
anyone can see a sacrament ceremony any week they
want—but not on film! That would be wrong!
The fact remains that despite the church’s open-
door policy (excepting the temples, of course) and
aggressive missionary posture—from which we prac-
tically beg the entire world to ask us questions and
come learn about all we do—a significant percentage
of the active membership of the church does not
want the world to know and/or feels some sense of
embarrassment at any “outside” exhibition of the life,
culture, ritual, stories, and traditions of the church.
Some of us active in developing serious LDS stories
for inclusion in films and other media intended for
widespread public consumption have experienced
significant friction and impediment from members
who do not feel such stories should be told!
“Inside” Anticrossover
T he result, good or bad, right or wrong, of this
“social embarrassment” is that there is a strong
cultural resistance to wide crossover appeal in LDS
faith-related media from inside the population
Irreantum
of the membership of the church. A significant
percentage of Mormons are cautious to the point
of inaction when it comes to any possibility of sig-
nificant public exposure of what they consider the
sacred aspects of their lives.
Crossover, quite frankly, scares the “oh my heck”
out of them.
Ironically, the official organs of the church have
a long history of film production and a tradition
of unusually high production values in institution-
ally produced proselytizing materials. Few religious
organizations put as much time, energy, and money
into such media, and none to my knowledge is as
deeply and consistently involved in the production
of films. All of these official media seem to receive
an exceptionally high approval rating among mem-
bers, the vast majority of whom think they are good
tools for the missionary effort as well as valuable for
individual worship and the promotion of faith.
But the moment such media are known to be
unofficial or unsanctioned, measurable doubt with
respect to the approval of such materials begins to
creep into the margins of those (admittedly infor-
mal and low-sample) surveys I have conducted.
Could this be one reason that recent LDS films
are faring so badly in the box office? Better in
quality than most, they still can’t seem to get an
audience, perhaps because, to some extent, they are
among the most “crossover” of any LDS films to date.
Pride & Prejudice is hardly recognizable as an LDS
film at all, except for its setting, and much of The
Home Teachers looks like outtakes from old John
Hughes movies. Other than the mountains in the
background, these are not home-grown stories.
The Media Double Standard
I
n addition to this subtle anxiety over public
exposure and desire by some members to sup-
press crossover, there is another ironic social factor
which becomes apparent with respect to popular
media consumption by Mormons: a clearly identi-
fiable double standard.
The double standard of which I speak manifests
itself more clearly with literature than with film.
Mormon consumers tolerate higher levels of profan-
ity, violence, sex, and other normally taboo story
27 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
elements when they are reading popular authors
who are “outsiders” describing situations which are
mainstream or “non-Mormon.” The reader often
excuses this reaction by saying, “Oh, I skip over
those parts,” or by justifying, “Well, that is just the
way it is.”
The second that the Mormon consumer knows
that the author of the work is LDS, however, or if
the subject matter or characters in the work have
some connection to the church or Mormonism, it
is as if a radar goes up and the standard of judg-
ment changes radically. The presence of profanity
or difficult themes in “Mormon arts” receives almost
no toleration, save for a minority of Mormon con-
sumers—even among those consumers who might
justify exposure to elements even more severe in
identifiably “non-Mormon” works.
Some of this criticism falls under a simple human
double standard, but some of this double standard
is maintained by institutional policy. Books, for
example, written by non-LDS authors containing
sex and violence are stocked and sold by Deseret
Book or the BYU Bookstore, but LDS authors who
try to publish such elements in their own work will
usually be rebuffed or heavily edited, and older
works containing such “objectionable” elements are
removed from the Deseret backlist.
Crossover elements, therefore, are resisted from
within the LDS audience base on two levels: (1) a
desire that certain things not be shown to “others”;
and (2) a desire that Mormon artists not explore
certain elements which audiences would otherwise
feel free to see in the mainstream media.
Much of Richard Dutcher’s work comes under
attack with respect to these two categories of “in-
house anticrossover” sentiment. His own audiences
do not want him showing “sacred” things to “out-
siders” (such as priesthood ordinances or miracles);
nor do they desire to see certain thematic elements
presented to them (such as violence or missionaries
questioning their own faith) which, while undeni-
ably true, they consider “unworthy” or from the
“outside world” (even if the level of intensity of
these themes might be less than that of an average
made-for-TV movie).
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
“Outside” Anticrossover
R egardless of any “inside anticrossover” senti-
ment which may be detectable among Mor-
mon audiences, the most compelling argument
to my mind against overconcern for the potential
of crossover in LDS film is the resistance to cross-
over marketing from the broader crossover markets
themselves. Ironically, the very markets that LDS
producers have anticipated will have great appeal
for their works have shown categorically that they
could not care less. Even with the Disney label back-
ing The Other Side of Heaven and positive reviews
in several non-LDS religious presses, reception out-
side the central Mormon niche has been lukewarm
at best. God’s Army and Brigham City both received
extensive critical coverage in the non-Mormon press
but did only lukewarm business in crossover mar-
kets (part of which may have been simple market-
ing errors and lack of a budget to do any concerted
crossover marketing, but which may also have been
a genuine lack of interest—we may never know).
No other LDS films have been able to garnish very
extensive critical coverage in the non-LDS press,
save for several articles talking about the phenom-
enon of LDS film generally.
Several films to my knowledge—Saints and
Soldiers is one of them—are finding that even their
very watered down religious elements are causing
some concern among foreign media buyers. At that
point, when there is so much interest in creating
crossover that there is almost no LDS element left,
why not just make a mainstream film? That will
make it more marketable in the long run. And by
being so “crossover,” you haven’t done LDS film
much good anyway.
This was definitely the case with American Grace,
a low-budget film that has yet to find any distribu-
tion whatsoever. The film at the development level
simply begged to be mainstream, and in that case,
I went the other way and strongly counseled that
the film not be made as an LDS film. The LDS
elements were slight and I feared might actually
prove offensive to LDS audiences. But the film-
maker insisted on keeping the LDS themes in, just
wanting to make a very crossover film. He succeeded
28 Irreantum
in alienating a studio where the film was shot in
Modesto—a studio owned by Evangelical Chris-
tians who were interested in helping the film as a
mainstream story but not interested in helping a
“Mormon story.” (Ultimately, it was not very LDS
anyway.) Sacrificing distribution and various other
production helps were not the only things going
against this ill-fated production, but ultimately the
film may be completely unsellable in its current
state.
The sad fact is, crossover markets basically don’t
care about our product—one hopes I can add the
addendum to this sentence: yet. So we must make
films that our target Mormon audience very much
wants to see, which speak to them, which tell their
stories, which are true to the spirit of the niche
market. Or we must make great mainstream films
the mainstream audience wants to see without our
feeling any sense of embarrassment or unease or
cringing in the presence of an LDS “crossover” film.
It’s just never worth it. Both sides of the coin will
be turned off.
The fact is, I just don’t believe that the general,
mainstream, and in this case crossover audiences
will ever give a hoot about our little LDS films.
Big-budget, high-profile, controversial films with
mainstream casts (such as The Prophet), perhaps.
But The Work and the Glory will not cross over, big
budget or no. And unfortunately, that business plan
depends on its ability to cross over, so it has failed
before it has even started.
I see two possible reasons for general lack of
“outside crossover potential”: (1) we’re scary; (2)
we’re boring. At first sight, these may seem mutu-
ally exclusive, but there are aspects of both of these
factors in the mainstream peripheral consciousness
regarding Mormons.
The Fear Factor
V ery few religions on the earth engage in pros-
elytizing to the extent that The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does, at least in
the eyes of the public. Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely
known to proselyte as aggressively as we do; many
evangelical religions engage in missionary campaigns;
Irreantum
but few, upon learning that a neighbor is Baptist,
would instantly think, “I wonder if he’ll try to
convert me.”
This factor may account for the single great-
est aspect of Mormonism which “outsiders” find
off-putting. Frankly, many mainstream Americans
have little to no consciousness of our existence at
all. When such consciousness exists, it is likely to
include some mishmashed threads of facts, prob-
ably including something to do with polygamy,
something about a golden bible, possibly some-
thing about certain historical figures such as Joseph
Smith or Brigham Young; but more likely the
knowledge stops just short of boys in white shirts
and ties and the BYU football team—if they hap-
pen to have had a winning season recently.
The missionary element of our religion is possi-
bly (although I have no survey data to support my
hypothesis) the single most discomforting factor
in mainstream or “crossover” audiences accepting
Mormon arts at face value; the instinctive reaction
is probably, “Oh, this is bound to be propagandis-
tic.” This fact is ironic, because with the possible
exception of Day of Defense, LDS films to date
have not been overly propagandistic, and most
reviews by non-LDS critics tend to mention that
fact (another support to my theory that these critics
were initially worried they might be).
It is possible that one of the factors which
motivate LDS filmmakers to struggle so hard to
create “crossover” films is that they want to prove
the instinctively understood preconception wrong.
“See, we can make fun of ourselves just like the
Greeks can,” or “Hey, we’re just normal people too,
albeit in white shirts and ties.”
But certainly, whether we are aware of it or not,
whether we consciously address the issue or not in
our work, whether our works are propagandistic
or not, our ability to cross over into other markets
will always be hampered by the preconception that
we are proselytizing.
This may be overcome on a film-by-film basis,
depending on an individual production’s budgetary
ability to keep the product in the public eye long
enough to overcome the preconception; or possibly
at an industry-wide basis if we continue to put out
29 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
films which are seen as genuine and nonpropagan-
distic. But I doubt this second possibility. I foresee
us always having an uphill battle when it comes to
crossover potential because of the fear factor: Mor-
mons are missionaries.
For the most part, the result will be benign
neglect. But in some cases, the fear turns into active
hostility, especially among Bible Belt regions with
strong evangelical markets that ostracize anything
LDS. I know of one LDS distribution company,
Thomson, that had to get an out-of-Utah mailing
address just to be able to place products on shelves
in certain regions. Even if the films they were sell-
ing were not overtly LDS, the Utah address kept
them from placing videos with certain Christian-
owned chains.
Crossover will never be easy for LDS product for
this reason alone.
The Snore Factor
S adly, the fear factor is not the only reason cross-
over will always be an uphill battle for LDS cin-
ema. The second factor is the snore factor. We are
boring. Paradoxically, those mainstream audiences
who do not hate us for whatever reason, or fear us
for whatever reason, tend to have no interest in us
at all—for a number of reasons.
I don’t know how many times I have heard
people tell me that the single most compelling evi-
dence they have for just knowing that LDS cinema
will have “universal appeal” is the success of such
films as Witness and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I
absolutely and completely balk at such compari-
sons. What can these people be talking about?
Show me anything in our bland, Midwestern,
white-blooded, contemporary Protestant-looking
religion and the utterly suburbia-looking culture it
has fostered that is anywhere remotely as interest-
ing as the Amish or the screaming, yelling big fat
Greeks? Truly, I’m mystified.
Basically, the church has spent the last hundred
years trying to make us look as “normal” in the eyes
of the world as we possibly can. We have taken our
curious religiously symbolic clothing (worn on the
outside by the orthodox Jews, the orthodox Greeks,
the orthodox Muslims, certainly the Amish, and
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
at one point—believe it or not—by us) and have
hidden them underneath regular street clothing, so
that we look, to the uninitiated observer, just like
everybody else. Our homes, our cars, our jobs, and
even (except for our temples) our churches pretty
much look like everybody else’s. Okay, those kids
in suits on bikes are different, but that’s about it.
And as far as the Greeks, well, other than our con-
sumption of Jell-O and propensity for three-bean
casseroles, the ability to strike globally recognized
humor at our culture is very limited. We’re just too
normal to be very entertaining.
John Moyer may have achieved a successful spin
by bringing a very recognizable culture into a Mor-
mon setting and having fun watching the clash in
his little gem of a script The Western Relocation Pro-
gram, now being called Mobsters & Mormons. The
titles say it all. Put some hard-core mobsters into
witness relocation in Salt Lake City, and humor
is bound to ensue. It’s the best one-line pitch I’ve
heard in a while, and it could easily be turned into
a series. The beauty of this high concept is that you
don’t really have to know anything about Mormons
to make it work; you know the Mob, and you know
Mormons are some conservative religion, so voila,
it’s funny. But it is the foreign element in the LDS
setting which is funny, not the LDS element itself.
We simply ain’t the Amish.
Some will point to the outrageously funny
Napoleon Dynamite, Jarod Hess’s breakout indie
which Fox Searchlight has picked up for distribu-
tion in a deal worth millions. But Hess, though
LDS, has not fashioned an LDS Greek Wedding.
He’s just a great writer/director who has captured
his quirky hometown in Idaho. Mormonism, cer-
tainly influential in small Idaho towns, is not his
subject. And it is the broadly recognizable humor
within the humanity of the film’s characters (not
the religious culture of the setting, per se) where
the film has found its broad appeal.
Films Nobody Wants
H ess’s success brings me around full circle to
discussing the filmmakers now being discov-
ered in our current explosive naissance among LDS
filmmakers. My impression is that LDS filmmakers
30 Irreantum
basically get everything I’ve expressed thus far. They
somehow have instinctively sensed the predicament
they are in, the difficulty of selling to their own
market that holds them up to a double standard,
is characterized by inconsistent moviegoers, and
may even be afraid of the idea of commercial films
about Mormons at all.
This sensation or recognition by filmmakers has
been part of the reason most are comfortable with
all the talk about creating crossover films to begin
with. Frankly, I feel LDS filmmakers would, for the
most part, be more comfortable making mainstream
films. There is a large group who always have;
many, including HaleStorm, may be doing so very
soon; and others, such as Ryan Little, have already
actively started developing mainstream films for
their next projects.
The fact is, LDS filmmakers understand the
machinations of mainstream films much better than
anybody understands the Mormon moviegoing
niche, which frankly, nobody understands just yet.
And there just doesn’t seem to be any money in LDS
film—hey, we all have families to feed. Frankly, if
we were all as funny as Hess, we’d all be doing what
he did—and hang trying to make LDS movies at
all!
That’s not entirely fair, of course. There are
several LDS filmmakers who could have made
horror flicks or some such and chose not to. But
the reflex among these filmmakers seems to have
been, thus far at any rate, to try to walk the fence
and do both things at once: make LDS movies (in
name and some content) because that is where the
development funds are coming from, but to try to
make them as Hollywood as possible, to have some
possibility of recouping in the imagined crossover
universe they seem to think is out there—but isn’t.
No, Virginia, there is no crossover, and the two
conditions are mutually incompatible.
Instead, we have created for ourselves a strange
hybrid: films that nobody wants.
Mormon audiences aren’t really going to see them
anymore, and mainstream or crossover audiences
could care less.
There are two other categories of filmmakers:
(1) filmmakers who have some LDS connection,
Irreantum
but who have never really made LDS films (such as
the newly emerged Hess and now well-established
LaBute); and (2) Richard Dutcher.
I place Richard in his own category, because I
believe he has always stood apart, creating deeply
personal films filled with paradoxically antitheti-
cal elements (such as powerful religion mixed
with deeply violent undercurrents) which are not
really commercially viable, but which come from
within himself as an artist and which he cannot not
do—despite the discomfort of his backers and the
well-meaning advice of his friends. His films are
not LDS films that attempt to cross over into main-
stream markets. They are a much more unique
animal than that. In my opinion (and I may be the
only critic to voice this idea), the films of Richard
Dutcher are mainstream films to begin with—about
LDS subjects or characters.
Dutcher is like LaBute in some ways, and both
of their voices are utterly unique. But Neil never
really attempted to be accepted by LDS audiences,
and Richard always has. But try as he might to be
loved by his own people, I think non-Mormons
(and only a rarified subniche of Mormon movie-
goers) will prove over time to be Dutcher’s truly
appreciative audience.
In effect, my two categories above are really one
category: artists who just do the best work they
can, because it is what they must do, who do not
really care to define a market category for their
work. Richard, often called by others “the Father
of LDS cinema,” chafes at the title—not because
he does not feel he has “started something,” but
because, in my own opinion, it is becoming more
and more apparent that the label, the very genre
itself, no longer contains his work.
A Call for the New LDS Artist
T he rest of the disparate group of LDS film-
makers is also chafing at labels, it seems. Few
if any are content to just make the movies LDS
audiences want to see (whatever those are). I think
that, because all this talk about crossover appeal
admits something of a discomfort with their work.
It must.
31 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 The problems with crossover appeal in LDS films
as I see it are as follows:
1. You can’t really anticipate crossover, so why
bother?
2. You may actually harm your work by trying to
(cutting stuff out or putting stuff in).
3. Your target audience doesn’t really want cross-
over.
4. Your crossover audience doesn’t really want
anything with LDS themes in it.
Ultimately, the quest for crossover potential is
unpredictable at best, self-destructive at worst.
I feel we must strike for a new direction, creating
stories (be they films or books) that tell our stories
(if they are LDS products) or do not (if they are
mainstream). Why try to mix the two? I have writ-
ten two scripts that mix the two, telling stories with
only mild or background LDS themes. And I have
several others with very strong, unavoidable—even
in-your-face (and certainly unapologetic)—LDS
themes. I am more comfortable with the latter. And
even though, given the increasingly dismal finan-
cial prospects for LDS film, none of my scripts may
ever be made, I can always turn them into novels.
My fear is that the spate of financial failures of
recent months will do one of two things—both
bad. It might kill LDS film altogether, or it will
seduce even more filmmakers into thinking they
should attempt to create product which will have
crossover to make them more financially viable—a
strategy which, in my opinion, will fail.
Crossover should never be the essential aspect of
a marketing plan. It should be the gravy. A film
must stand on its own within the target audience,
and then it might cross over, and if so, great. Plan-
ning on making a crossover film is like saying “this
film has universal appeal,” which is tantamount to
admitting that you have no marketing plan what-
soever.
Nothing has universal appeal. The gospel doesn’t
even have universal appeal.
Pick your market, create a world-class product
appropriate for that market, and let crossover take
care of itself.
When we have arrived at telling truly true LDS
stories—sorry for the redundancy, but I mean ones
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
that the target audience really recognizes viscerally
as their own—the box office will return, and not
only that, but strangely, crossover audiences will
then begin to be curious to experience a world with
which they are unfamiliar, via the safety of film.
Boyz in the Hood enjoyed an amazing—and
unexpected—crossover appeal. But it did not do
so by creating a film about the black South Central
L.A. experience watered down so that white Middle
America wouldn’t be afraid of it. In fact, it did just
the opposite. It made a world so real that blacks in
New York were afraid of it! But they went to see it.
And so did white Middle America, because they
had to see what all the fuss was about. The film
won Oscars and over $100 million—back when
that really meant something. No one expected that
crossover, but it happened because the filmmakers
were true to their target audience and created a world
others wanted to check out.
Culturally, what we seem to have in the nascent
LDS film industry is a desire for broad commercial
acceptance without yet learning what appeals to
our own at-home market. Films are being green-lit
at a furious pace with no communication, no learn-
ing curve, no stopping to think.
The fact of the matter is, young LDS filmmakers
seem to really want to make Hollywood films but
aren’t good enough to break into that, so they try
their hand at so-called LDS films. But the market
will clearly not bear such compromises. Films
which are world class in their genre will be accepted
at the level of their competence (limited somewhat
by marketing budgets, of course).
Ultimately the call is just to become great film-
makers. Ironically, a few have struggled desperately
to get funded while others with little or no talent
gobble up the available production dollar when
they really should be booted off the stage. But such
is the life and reality of the world. This is an indus-
try. Many will now be scared off by conditions and
go into the mainstream. Others, succeeding in the
mainstream first, may never come back and use
their talents to tell LDS stories. That, too, is the
reality of the market.
But to those who have green-lit budgets behind
them, to those who have the opportunity before
32 Irreantum
them, to those whose objectives place them within
the circle of LDS themes, my counsel is to seek not
for this elusive idea of a crossover film.
Seek to make a great film that tells your and your
people’s story. Tell it strongly enough, and others
will want to take a peek.
But if you say at the outset that you are making
a film with high crossover or universal appeal, chances
are a little bit of everybody will be confused.
Jongiorgi Enos is an actor, playwright, screenwriter,
producer, director, essayist, novelist, and teacher who
has been deeply involved with the entertainment
industry since the age of twelve. After twenty-five
years in theater and a BA from BYU’s film and
theater department, he pursued MFA studies with
the late Tad Danielewski while working at MGM
Studios and then the National Research Group, the
film industry’s primary market research firm. A free-
lancer since 1997, he founded his own company, Enos
Entertainment, Inc., in 2003 and recently cofounded
the Utah Filmmakers Alliance with Richard Dutcher.
LDS film audiences may know Enos from his acting
roles as Ed Gray in Brigham City, John the Baptist
in Testaments, and Officer Roy in Someone Was
Watching. He lives in Northern California with his
wife and three children, where he serves in the elders
quorum.
Irreantum
I n t e r v i e w
John Moyer
W hen John Moyer wrote the screenplay for
The Singles Ward in 2000, he did it purely
for “kicks and giggles,” never thinking it would see
the light of day. When HaleStorm Entertainment
approached him in 2001 about doing a script for
them, he informed them that he already had one
ready to go. The success of The Singles Ward launched
HaleStorm as one of the key players in the new Mor-
mon cinema movement, and Moyer went on to earn
screenwriting credits on HaleStorm’s subsequent films,
The R.M. and The Home Teachers.
Moyer grew up in South Jersey, just outside of Phil-
adelphia. After graduating from BYU with a degree
in theater and film in 1994, he traveled around the
United States and Canada, performing standup com-
edy. Today, he lives in Alpine, Utah, with his wife and
new child.
W hat is your underlying drive as a writer?
Why do you do it? What are you trying to
accomplish? What are the rewards?
For me, writing is simply a form of expression.
It’s about taking an idea, a feeling, something that’s
inside of me that generates certain emotions and
packaging that in a form that I can share with other
people and hopefully create the same emotions or
thoughts within them. It’s a way to get somebody
else to look at the world the way I do, or, if they are
somebody who already does, then it’s something we
can both share together. Either way it creates a bond
between me the writer and them the audience.
Sometimes it has just the opposite effect and people
walk away angry. That’s great too. It’s all about gen-
erating emotion and causing someone to think.
Literary art is a combination of three elements:
what the author has experienced, observed, and
imagined. How do those three elements work
together for you in your writing?
For me it’s mostly about experience and obser-
vation. I take things that I have gone through or
witnessed, things that have created extreme levels
33 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
of thought or emotion, and I recreate them. That
was one of the funny things about Singles Ward; so
many people said, “That is totally unrealistic that
he would come home and find his wife drinking
and smoking and saying she wasn’t going to church
anymore!” Well, guess what. That was totally true.
I was an elders quorum president at BYU, and I
came home one day to find my then wife drinking
a beer and smoking a cigarette, two things she had
previously done before joining the church and mar-
rying me. She said she was fed up with church and
wasn’t going anymore.
After that, we eventually divorced. Going to
church was painful because I felt like such a failure.
I didn’t belong in the family ward, and the singles
ward was filled with—well, let’s just say so many
of the characters I wrote about, that I slowly went
inactive. That whole experience and how I felt
about the church and God really did a number on
me. I wound up writing about it. To this day, I still
talk to people who tell me they knew exactly what
those characters in the movie were going through.
Another experience was a scene from The R.M.
At one point I really worked for a rent-to-own
company and had to repossess a young child’s bed.
He was crying to his mom about not wanting to
sleep on the floor. That was so hard for me. But I
had to suck it up because his parents were negligent
on their financial obligation and, like it or not, I
was the guy who had to do this job. That was a
tough day for me. It was hard. Later on, when I
wrote about it, it was a way for me to deal with
guilt and a messed-up situation by trying to go
back and laugh at it now.
In another scene, Jared has to spend the night
in a hotel room with a complete freak. That actu-
ally happened to me. Totally true story, though the
scene in the movie is a little more toned down than
reality. In reality, the guy I was sharing the room
with, after reading his Jesus the Christ and then fall-
ing asleep, starting screaming profanities at the top
of his lungs. I got the heck out of the room and
spent the night on the couch in the lobby. To me,
as jacked up as it was at the time, it was actually a
very funny situation that I simply wanted to recre-
ate for the masses.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
What other things do you do besides write
HaleStorm screenplays? Do you earn a living as
a full-time writer?
I have been performing standup comedy for the
last ten years. Between that and my writing, I pay
the bills.
Tell us about your writing process. Does
writing come easy or hard? How much advance
planning and outlining do you do? What are
your drafting and revision processes like? How
often do you actually sit down to write, and
under what conditions?
Writing comes fairly easy. But as with all writers,
there are times when I am completely stumped. I
just wait it out and know that it will eventually
come to me. For the overall actual process, I do a
combination of planning and flying by the seat of
my pants. I try to nail down what I call my story
anchor points. A lot of screenwriters will say not to
get hung up on the page count, but I’m sorry, page
count is everything. Why have a hundred and fifty
pages that you have to cut down to ninety? I say,
do all the cutting as you write. I know by page ten
I need to be here, by page forty-five I need to be
here, by page seventy here, etc. So, I cater to that as
I write. I come up with what I want to happen by
those pages: the inciting incident, the initial push
of the story, the mid-act crisis, etc., and then I fill
in the blanks of what needs to happen both physi-
cally and emotionally from there.
But also, I leave room for stuff that just happens.
There are times when something will come down
onto the paper that I have no clue where it came
from. The character will say something that spins
the whole thing into a new direction. I love that.
That’s when the characters and the story really
come alive and become their own beings.
As far as editing, during the first go around I
let my characters say whatever with however many
words it takes. Then I go back and trim dialogue.
I am often amazed that what took me five lines the
first time around can be said in one line.
I do write fairly quickly. When I get into it, I
work a solid ten hours a day, six days a week. Of
course, I have yet to tackle a script as a father. Hav-
ing an infant in the house now certainly slows the
34 Irreantum

process down. I have been polishing my Mobster
script, and it’s been quite the challenge trying to
type and rock an infant seat with my foot, only
to have him want to be held. I just have to put
everything on hold and hope he falls asleep soon.
I write at home in my office, but I also have a
laptop and enjoy going to a couple of places outside
the house to work, either the Cougar Eat down at
BYU or this bagel place on Center Street in Provo
that has that vintage café feel. I enjoy the ambiance.
I can pour out a first draft in about a month or
so at my ten-hour-per-day rate. Then I sit on it for
a few weeks. But after that first draft is done, after
I have poured out so much from inside of me with
all that energy, I go through this post-writing depres-
sion for a few days. My wife hates it. I become a
vegetable. It’s like I just spent all this time focused
on a purpose, and now I feel like I have no more
purpose. It’s very strange.
Irreantum
But after that, I go back and tweak. It’s at that
point I will let a few key people read it, people I
know I can trust to be honest one way or the other.
But you have to balance comments from people
and learn to sift through things. Recently two very
talented, very creative people, who really know what
they are talking about, gave me some feedback
unbeknownst to each other. One absolutely loved
a particular scene, and the other absolutely hated it.
What I am to make of that? To each his own; you
can’t please everybody. Was the scene bad because
person X hated it? Was it great because person Y
loved it?
You have to listen to people with a wide-open
mind. I take everything in and digest it. Oftentimes
there are things somebody else saw that I didn’t. Or
they might have ideas I never thought of. The dan-
ger comes when you have somebody who likes the
story and wants to see it told their way. Suddenly
it’s no longer about your story; they start giving
you feedback about how they think it should be.
The greatest approach to critique I ever experi-
enced was in Film 101 with Dr. Charles Metten at
BYU. He used to yell at the film students, “Don’t
tell me what you would have done! Or what you
would have liked to have seen! Tell me what you
saw!” I apply that to my readers. Don’t tell me what
you would have liked to have read or what you
would have written. First, tell me what you actually
read, then, if there is a void, let’s talk about how to
fill it.
But you also need to know when to just trust
your own instincts. I mean, obviously if you have
thirty people reading a script and they all say the
same thing, you know there’s some truth to what-
ever they are pointing out. Other times, you just
need to shut that all out and go with your gut.
Have some confidence in yourself as a writer, and
don’t sway with the breeze. At the same time, sur-
round yourself with key readers you know you can
trust.
Which is your favorite from among your
movies, and why? Which is your least favorite,
and why? What is your all-time favorite scene
from your screenplays? Which scene do you most
regret, and why?
35 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 I don’t have a favorite of the movies. To me they
are apples and oranges. Each one has elements I
love, just simply like, and completely despise.
One of my favorite scenes would have to be the
juxtaposition of how elders quorum and Relief
Society teach, the sisters taking so much time and
preparation while the brethren just seem to throw
things together, if at all. My father-in-law and
mother-in-law both taught the lessons at the same
time. Somebody came up to my father-in-law once
after church and asked if the elders had the same
lesson as the sisters. He said, Yes, why? The fellow
responded that the sisters had some big chart, with
music and treats. But not the elders.
When it comes to film,
or music, or art,
there is no
right or wrong.
It’s simply opinion.
The scene I regret most is the courtroom scene
from The R.M., a scene I did not write. I had a
courtroom scene in my original first draft, but, alas,
through rewrites outside of my control that I did
not agree with, it became what you see in the final
product.
But from something I did write—I don’t regret
the scene, but I would have written it differently
now. That’s the scene where Jonathan and the temp-
tress played by Michelle Ainge go to her apartment
toward the end of The Singles Ward. I think it could
have been lightened up a bit. There were some
moments that could have conveyed the message
while still being fun. But then again, I don’t know.
What’s done is done, and it’s in the BYU archives
for time and all eternity.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
Not getting paid anymore. That sounds terribly
superficial, but it’s true. I do what I do for art’s sake,
but I also do it for the money. In some respects I
am a literary whore. But that’s okay.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
What is your response to people who get
offended by your work and don’t understand
what you’re trying to do? Does that happen
often?
I could care less. I know there has been a lot of
talk about us not being able to handle criticism.
But I can handle it. What I don’t understand are
people’s anger, their outrage, and their offense at
these movies. It isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of
things; there really are only a few compared to the
overwhelmingly positive response. But I remember
one woman who made a comment about how at a
singles function someone suggested there be a show-
ing of The Singles Ward, and she quickly shot down
that suggestion because the film was so inappropri-
ate. Or the person who suggested on Deseret Book’s
website that the soundtracks to the movies were
slowly leading their children down to hell. Huh?
Whatever. But those comments really amuse me. I
enjoy hearing and reading them because they really
are good for a laugh and make for great fodder on
my website. I got an e-mail from a guy two weeks
ago who told me that what I did sickens him. I
suggested a blessing.
How much have your HaleStorm screenplays
been changed from your original vision and
manuscripts? Maybe a couple of examples?
Well, in Singles Ward, none of the cameos were
written by me at the time I wrote the script. They
were all added after the fact. I did write Richard
Dutcher’s scene, though. It worked so well with
the girl getting offended at watching God’s Army.
It was my commentary on uptight Mormons. Gor-
don Jump wasn’t really a celeb cameo; that was a
character I wrote in the script, and Gordon played
him. And I think he played it well. That was his last
movie, I believe.
But as for the rest, they were added as various
Mormon celebs came on board. Some worked,
like Steve Young’s, which I thought was a great
gag, but some didn’t. I was distracted by “Hey, let’s
take thirty seconds out of the story to parade these
people across the screen.”
The R.M. changed even more so. I would say
the final product was about seventy-five percent
close to my original. I am not saying that what
36 Irreantum
changed was bad or that I didn’t agree with it all.
Some things didn’t work for me, and I didn’t agree
with them. Others I really liked, and I was the first
person to say I didn’t think of that and that really
worked. The scene where Jared talks on the phone
to Kelly and asks her out wasn’t in my original ver-
sion, and it works great and gets a huge laugh. The
story behind that was that one of the movie’s inves-
tors really had that happen to him, where he called
his friends back to tell them that the girl he’d just
asked out said yes, and it turned out he accidentally
redialed the girl.
The critics haven’t exactly been kind about
the HaleStorm films, have they? Are the critics
right or wrong? What is your response to some
of the criticisms that you recall?
I think many of the criticisms are valid, but
many are not. Wow, could that have been any
more middle of the road, ambiguous? I sound like
a politician. But seriously, are the films technically
flawed? Heck, yeah. But we’re like the plastic sur-
geon from Batman that worked on Nicholson and
accidentally turned him into the Joker. His response
was, “Look at the tools I have to work with!” We
have low budgets and tight schedules, and at first
we had no clue what we were doing. That’s no
excuse, but it’s true, and technically the films have
gotten better looking.
They have criticized the jokes and the stories,
but are they wrong? Not to them or to the people
who agree with them. But there are a whole lot of
people who don’t agree with them. The bottom line
to me is that when it comes to film, or music, or
art, there is no right or wrong. It’s simply opinion.
But again, what does amuse me is the intensity
that some people have for hating these movies. I
mean, there are many LDS artists who have this
idea of what LDS films should be in order to
qualify as good or acceptable, etc. And if they don’t
meet their own personal criteria, then these films
are garbage, bottom line, and don’t deserve any
respect. That I don’t agree with. Again, it’s a matter
of opinion.
One of my all-time favorite comments about my
movies was the guy who said, “What does it say
about the Mormon audience that Singles Ward has
become a must-see among Mormons? Are we, who
Irreantum
believe we are admonised [sic] to seek after the best
of everything, not getting the message? Are we, like
the unenlightened world which we regularly con-
demn in our sermons, so shallow that we embrace
the obvious over the asthetic [sic]?” I just love that
comment. It makes me laugh every time.
Some critics have suggested that under the
fun and games, your scripts, especially The R.M.
script, contain some savage satire of Mormon
culture. Some have suggested, for example, that
you’re exploring an almost sociopathic lack of
genuine love and affection in Mormon families;
that’s at least one way to read a family forgetting
to tell their missionary they’ve moved. Is this
your intention?
First off, I have gotten some good chuckles out
of people who have pontificated about my movies.
I remember reading something someone posted on
AML-List. I believe she was a grad student some-
where and did some type of thesis or paper on Singles
Ward. She went on and on, elaborating on what cer-
tain things meant, what the filmmakers were trying
to say, and what we had intended or were trying to
do, yadda, yadda. I just thought, you couldn’t be
more wrong, and you really have no idea what you
are talking about.
The family in The R.M. forgetting to tell their
son that they had moved was about how busy our
lives get with the church, so busy that we sometimes
put more effort into everybody else’s salvation before
we worry about our own families. I wasn’t trying
to say there is a lack of genuine love or affection;
I was saying that sometimes we just get caught up
elsewhere.
There is a line from The Home Teachers where
Nelson admits he missed his son being born because
he was out on splits with the missionaries. I knew
a guy to whom that actually happened. He got so
caught up in service, thinking he was doing good,
but he was neglecting something more important
in his grand scheme of things at the time.
To me, if there is any savage satire, it’s in The
Singles Ward. We have these groups of people
who want to get married because they are told
it’s the thing to do. So they do it, sometimes at
great expense—like when they do it just to do it.
And when it doesn’t happen fast enough, they get
37 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
depressed and they feel like failures. And the ones
who get married but wind up getting divorced
really feel like failures and are looked upon with
suspicion by everybody else. I felt a lot of anger at
what I went through. Not just at the church or the
members, but at myself too for the stupid mistakes
I made in my own decisions to get married. I have
seen single adults go through many of the same and
sometimes worse things than me. I have seen out-
rageously clueless attitudes about marriage. Those
were all the things I wanted to hit on with Singles
Ward.
Your work clearly plugs into the work of other
Mormon satirists, such as James Arrington, Eric
Snider, Robert Kirby, and, going back some years,
Sam Taylor. Have you seen much work by other
LDS humorists? Are you influenced by them?
I read their work. I think Eric Snider is a bril-
liant writer. He just gave me feedback on a script,
so I guess you could say I am influenced by him in
that way.
One might argue that there are two strains in
LDS humor, the John Bytheway/Alan Cherry
school, in which the idea is to combine humor
with an inspirational message, and the James
Arrington/Robert Kirby school, in which the
idea is to just make fun of the culture and allow
the audience to arrive at whatever conclusions
they want. Do you agree, and, if so, which school
do you see yourself favoring?
I think there is a happy medium, a combination
of both. I can’t take credit for some of the more
emotional scenes in the movies, such as Jonathan
crying on the mountaintop in Singles Ward. That
was written by the director. But the overall mes-
sage of Singles Ward was something very personal
to me—that is, do the right thing for the right
reasons. I got married to get married and took no
thought for what I was really doing because I just
thought I had to get married or I would be a loser
in the eyes of my fellow church members. So I did,
and look where it got me the first time around. I
felt strongly about conveying that message in the
script through humor, satire, etc., and I think it
worked, and I have spoken to people for whom it
rang home both from a comic perspective and a
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
spiritual one. And as a writer, I was overjoyed that
I was able to communicate effectively and touch
people that way.
You got into a tiff with Richard Dutcher
several months back, didn’t you? Some diary
excerpts on your website mentioned it. Have
you reconciled these differences?
I wouldn’t say a tiff. Well, maybe. But I never
had any hard feelings toward Richard. I was con-
fused about some of his public comments, so I used
them for fodder on my site. I get a ton of traffic
there. Don’t ask me why, but people go there and
actually read the things I write and complain when
it’s not updated. So I had to get some filler. But
in the end, Richard and I chatted, and all is well.
I consider Richard a friend and have considerable
respect for him.
Are you involved with that new nonprofit
film organization started by Jongiorgi Enos and
Richard Dutcher, the Utah Filmmakers Alli-
ance?
Only on a membership basis at this point. But I
want to do all I can to help further artists and the
efforts here in Utah.
Where would you like to see Mormon film go
in the future? What is the most glaring absence,
in your opinion, of a Mormon film that hasn’t
been made yet?
I have no clue, to be perfectly honest. But what
I would like to see is filmmakers within the church
rise up and make it among the Hollywood elite. I
think using Mormon film as a springboard to that
end is appropriate.
Glaring absence of a Mormon film yet to be
made? Hmmm, I don’t know—aside from the per-
fectly obvious Book of Mormon movie done Lord
of the Rings style with a hundred-million-dollar
budget. But that ain’t happening.
What is absent among the filmmakers is a solid
sense of camaraderie. There’s an old saying among
standup comics: Standup comics love to watch
other comics bomb. I think there’s a lot of that
floating around the LDS movie community. Every-
body wants to make a film to outdo everybody else,
and when somebody else’s film comes out and does
well, there is bitterness, and when it doesn’t do
38 Irreantum
well, there is glee. There is a sense of arrogance that
somebody else doesn’t know what they are doing
and can’t do it as well as “I” or “we” can. Why can’t
we just support everybody else and help each other
up the ladder instead of trying to walk over every-
body to get to the top? A house divided against
itself cannot stand. LDS film can be a solid force
for good. And Satan would love nothing more than
to see anyone get destroyed in the process if he can
use it as a tool to bring an individual or individuals
down.
In addition, I would like to see audiences be a bit
more supportive. When Singles Ward came out, it
was the number-two film at Carmike’s Wynnsong
theater in Provo. The number-one film was Unfaith-
ful, a hard R-rated movie about a woman who
commits adultery and whose husband kills his
wife’s lover. I mean, what does it say that the the-
ater that probably services the most Mormon area
in Utah has that going on?
What new directions do you see your writing
taking in the future? Do you anticipate trying
out any different styles or genres? Anything in
film outside the HaleStorm niche?
I am breaking away from the LDS film niche.
I was trying to raise money for a non-LDS film,
but I found investors eager to do something LDS
oriented. I had a script that I wrote about a mob
family from Jersey, where I grew up, being placed
into the witness relocation program among an all-
Mormon community in Utah. I figured that would
be the best of both worlds: something that non-
LDS people could enjoy but that would also appeal
to the original LDS fan base. It’s written from the
outsider’s perspective and there are no inside jokes,
so it’s akin to Harrison Ford in Witness. It will appeal
to all audiences. I am hoping to use this as a bridge
between the two worlds of Mormon and non-
Mormon film and walk across it to the other side.
But most importantly, I will be directing this as
well, so I will get to see my vision carried through
from the first word I type to the answer print of the
film.
Whatever I do beyond that, I can tell you this: I
don’t anticipate having any Mormon characters in
it. It’s time to move on.
Irreantum
S c r e e n p l a y
E x c e r p t
Mobsters & Mormons
By John Moyer
E xt. posh house—backyard—day
South Jersey. A festive Italian wedding reception
in full swing. A band plays. People dance. Good times.
A tough-looking fellow hands the bride an envelope.
She kisses him “thank you.”
A waitress with a coffee pot makes her rounds. She
pours into the cup belonging to CARMINE “THE
BEANS” PASQUALE (40s). He sits next to DOMINIC
(40s). Carmine sips. Makes a face.
Beans: Hundred bucks a plate, they can’t serve a
decent cup of coffee.
On the back porch
JIMMY (23), a young “ladies man” type, flirts with
some girls. Chuckles. Laughs. He excuses himself.
At beans’s table
Beans notices Jimmy’s departure. He looks toward—
The lawn area
JACKIE AND PETEY (30), two wise guys, mingle. They
notice Jimmy. They look toward Beans and walk
toward the house.
At beans’s table
Beans and Dominic get up.
Int. posh house—downstairs bathroom—day
The toilet FLUSHES. Jimmy washes his hands. Primps
his hair. A couple of spritzes of Binaca.
Downstairs hallway
Jimmy walks out to discover the four wise guys wait-
ing.
Jimmy: Hey guys, long line. You might wanna wait
a while ’fore you go in there.
39 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Dominic: We ain’t goin’ in.
Upstairs bedroom
Jimmy’s pushed to sit on the bed. He’s nervous. Domi-
nic closes the door.
Beans (to Jimmy): Word’s going around somebody
took a little taste of that jewelry heist coming in
from the airport.
Jimmy: I don’t know nothin’ about it.
Beans: Don’t lie to me like I’m Judge Judy!
Jimmy’s eyes are wide. He stares, then rushes for the
window. Sheer panic.
Outside the house
Jimmy pounds on the glass, SCREAMS like a girl.
Upstairs bedroom
The guys pull Jimmy away and shove him onto the bed
and hold him down.
Dominic: Young people don’t take no responsibil-
ity. It’s the decline of the two-parent household.
Statistics show single parents are more apt to bein’
enablers.
Beans: My old man walked out on us when I was
ten and never came back. I turned out fine. This
kid’s just a punk!
Jimmy: Okay! I lifted a few stones! Couple ’a
necklaces! But I still got ’em. They’re in my stor-
age unit!
Beans: Then you’re takin’ us to this storage unit.
Dominic, pull my car around. (To Petey and Jackie)
I don’t want him havin’ another panic attack, so you
guys wrap our little package up here real good.
A beat.
Jackie: With what?
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Beans: What d’you mean, with what? Rope! Chains!
I don’t care!
Jackie: My cummerbund? I ain’t got anything.
Petey: Me neither. You just told us about this ten
minutes ago.
Jackie: I mean, not for nothin’, but if we knew a
little sooner . . .
Beans: This is a house! I’m sure they got somethin’!
Find it!
Beans makes for the door. He cuts back, reaches in
Jimmy’s coat pocket, and takes out a thick manila
envelope.
Ext. posh house—backyard—day
Beans makes his way through the crowd. He’s spotted
by his wife, GINA (40). She’s a big-hair, fake-nails,
high-heels-wearing woman.
Gina: Carmine! Where you been?
Beans: Whatta you care? You been over there cheep-
cheepin’ with your friends like it’s a quiltin’ party!
Gina: Who is she? Huh? Who’s your goomah this
week? It’s Ralph Todaro’s sister, isn’t it!
Beans rolls his eyes as Gina looks around. Beans passes
the bride and groom and hands them the manila
envelope.
Beans (kissing the bride): Congratulations.
Gina (spotting Ralph): Ralph! (Pulling his arm)
Ralphie! Where’s Donna?
Ralph: Haven’t seen her.
Gina (calling to Beans): Ah-ha! I knew it! You’re a
good for nothin’!
Beans (circle to his head): And you’re oobatz!
40 Irreantum
At the catering tables
Beans approaches a very distinguished looking ANG-
ELLO MARCELLO (55), who is eating a hearty plate
of food. He sits with a couple of right-hand men.
Angello (to the others): Give us a minute.
The right-hand men leave. Angello nods for Beans
to sit.
Angello (cont’d) (to Beans): How’s that thing?
Beans: The thing’s good. Takin’ care of it as we
speak.
Angello: Good. Now listen, Beans, not for nothin’,
but, you know, I think you’re aces. One of my best
earners.
Beans: Sure, Angello. And you’ve been nothin’ but
a father to me.
Angello: Fuhgeddaboudit . . . But I want you to
hear it from me first. Mickey Valechi is the new
captain.
Beans goes stone-faced but maintains composure.
Beans: Mickey’s a standup guy.
Angello: I knew I could count on your support.
Beans: Yeah, sure. Look, I gotta finish takin’ care
of the thing.
Int. posh house—front hall—day
Beans storms through, steaming mad.
Beans (muttering under his breath): Mickey Valechi!
Mickey Valechi!
MICKEY VALECHI (40) passes through.
Beans (cont’d) (gleefully hugging and kissing): Hey!
Mickey Valechi!
Irreantum
Int. posh house—bedroom—day
Beans enters to find Jimmy in his undershirt and
underpants, duct-taped from his mouth to his ankles.
Jackie: I found some duct tape in the garage.
Beans: I said make sure he ain’t gonna go nowhere.
Not roll him like a Cuban cigar!
Jackie: You said wrap the package.
Beans: It was a figure of speech! And why’s he in
his underwear?
Petey: The tux’s gotta be back by six.
Dominic: He used his ma’s credit card. I didn’t
wanna see her get stuck with late charges. I told
him we’d drop it off on the way.
Beans: And how you gonna get ’im outta here? He
can’t even walk like that!
Dominic: He can hop. (To Jimmy) Show the man
you can hop.
Jimmy jumps up and down a couple of times.
Beans: Get ridda some of that tape!
Jackie rips the tape from around Jimmy’s calves. Jimmy
SCREAMS through the tape across his mouth. There’s a
ton of hair on the tape.
Jackie: Guy’s Italian. Whatta ya goin’ do?
Dominic: Fuhgeddaboudit.
Ext. posh house—garage—day
From a distance, one sees the car backed up. Beans
looks out from the door to the house. He walks out
and motions to the others. Dominic, Petey, and Jackie
escort Jimmy, who can barely shuffle both of his feet
along. The scene is SNAPPED IN BLACK AND WHITE
THROUGH THE HIGH-POWERED LENS OF A CAMERA.
41 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Jimmy gets shoved. They close the trunk. They get in
the car. ANOTHER SNAPSHOT.
Int. FBI van—day
AGENT BANKS and AGENT SNIDER set up shop in front
of a myriad of surveillance equipment. Headphones
are around their necks.
Agent Banks: We got Carmine “The Beans”
Pasquale and his crew—with Jimmy Ammoroso in
the trunk all wrapped up like a wedding present.
Agent Snider: I think we’re the ones who just got
a great big gift.
Ext. storage shed—night
Jackie and Petey open the trunk where Jimmy is
stashed.
Petey: You got a lot of cargo space in here, Beans.
I couldn’t get that Mr. Miyagi in the trunk of my
Toyota.
Taking Jimmy out.
Jackie: Whatta you thinkin’, buyin’ foreign? Detroit
builds its cars with Americans in mind; we’re the
most obese country in the world.
Dominic (snipping the lock on the storage door with
cutters): I go shopping for a car, I take my cousin
Pauly with me.
Jackie: He’s a big boy.
Dominic: If he can fit in the trunk, anybody can.
He lifts the door as Petey and Jackie hop Jimmy over.
Beans (to Jimmy): Where is it?
Jimmy (pointing with head): Behind the couch, in
a briefcase.
Beans nods toward Dominic, who heads inside.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Petey: What about those sumo wrestlers? Those
guys are huge.
Jackie: What’s your point?
Petey: I’m saying they’re fat!
Jackie: So let the Asian mob worry about putting
one of them in the trunk of a Toyota!
Dominic comes out with a briefcase.
Dominic (handing it to Beans): It’s all there.
SIRENS. FLASHING LIGHTS. FBI cars SQUEAL UP. The
Feds jump out.
Agent Banks: FBI! Everybody down!
Beans can’t believe it. The wise guys get down. Jimmy
flops over like a dead fish.
Int. interrogation room—night
Beans sits with Banks and Snider.
Agent Banks: Look, Carmine, I have to tell you.
Kidnapping, accessory to that jewelry heist—
couple that with the rap sheet you got under your
belt, you’re looking at twenty-five years, easy.
Agent Snider: Unless Angelo Marcello thinks you
might talk. Then you’re looking at six feet under.
Banks and Snider CHUCKLE.
Agent Banks: And Angelo just might think that.
(Leaning in) He might hear rumors you’re holding
a grudge about being passed over for captain.
Beans glares.
Agent Banks (cont’d): Either way, it’s lose-lose.
Agent Banks sucks the last drops of soda through a
straw out of his cup. Several seconds of SLURPING.
Beans glares, looks away.
42 Irreantum
Agent Banks (cont’d): Unless you actually do
talk. Then there’s a way we can help you win.
Beans pouts.
Ext. city court house—day
A flood of people pours down the steps, surrounding
a handcuffed Angelo Marcello and several other wise
guys. Microphones and cameras stick in their faces.
They pass a REPORTER on camera.
Reporter (into camera): Six accused members
of the Marcello mob family, including mob boss
Angelo Marcello, were found guilty today of twelve
counts of extortion and racketeering. Prosecutors
credited the victory to the testimony of longtime
Marcello crime family member Carmine “The
Beans” Pasquale, who is now believed to have
entered the federal witness protection program.
Int. Fbi conference room—day
An AGENT stands guard in the room. Gina, with sour,
pursed lips, taps her long, acrylic nails on the table
top. Their son VINCENT (16), arms folded, listens to a
portable CD player.
Gina: Not being able to see her great-grandson
no more—Grandma Florintino is gonna be heart-
broken.
Beans: Oh, please! When she came over on the
boat, it said give me your poor, your tired, your
huddled masses. You know why they were huddled?
’Cause she was smacking the crap out of everybody
with that wooden spoon!
Gina: You know what? The place may change, but
you will always be a jerk!
Vincent: Would you guys shut up!
Beans: You don’t speak to me that way! What are
you listening to? Rap music? That garbage breeds
disrespect! And what kind of names are those! Slim
Shady? Puff Daddy?
Irreantum
Vincent: He goes by P. Diddy for short.
Beans: For short? Yeah, takin’ all that time to say
Puff, my day’s shot.
Vincent: ’Sides, they call you Carmine the Beans.
Beans: I grind my own coffee! Ergo, the Beans!
That makes sense! What’s this Puff Daddy guy do?
Chain smoke around his kids?
Banks enters.
Agent Banks: Well, you are no longer known as
Carmine the Beans. (Holding up several folders and
passing them out) You are now George, Linda, and
Patrick Cheeseman.
Beans: What kind of name is Cheeseman? What
is that? French?
Vincent: And who’s Patrick and who’s George? I
ain’t no George!
Beans: You think I’m gonna be a George?
Gina: Linda is a beautiful name. I always said, I
wished my mother had named me Linda.
Beans: Your mother should have named you
Chatty Kathy!
Vincent: Well, I ain’t no Patrick either. They call
you Pat for short. Pat’s a girl’s name. I don’t want
to be no name that goes both ways!
Agent Banks: Look, we have IDs, birth certifi-
cates, Social Security numbers. And they’re all made
out for (pointing at Beans first, then the others)
George, Linda, and Patrick Cheeseman.
A long beat as Beans pouts. Gina looks embarrassed.
Vincent: Then I’m going by Rick. Not Pat.
Another beat. Banks keeps eyeing everybody.
43 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Gina: So Agent Banks, where are we moving to?
Banks looks up.
Int. airport—main entrance—day
An unenthusiastic Beans, Gina, and Vincent come
down the main escalator, where two men dressed
in dark trench coats and sunglasses hold up a sign
that reads: CHEESEMAN. This is AGENT WILCOX and
AGENT GATLING.
Agent Wilcox (to the family): Mr. and Mrs. Chee-
seman?
Beans: Yeah.
Agent Wilcox: Welcome to Utah!
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
E s s a y
HaleStorm Showers
May Bring Flowers
By Stephen Carter
W ell, I finally did it. I tried to keep a low pro-
file by putting Sliding Doors on top of the
pile. I hoped the cashier wouldn’t notice how I was
going against all my morals by renting the suspect
movies beneath it and, if she did, that she wouldn’t
tell my family and friends. I don’t think anyone has
gone through so much stress just to rent The Singles
Ward and The R.M. I had to do it, though, because
many people whose artistic opinions I respect didn’t
like either of these movies. Yet they have been some
of the most popular and financially successful Mor-
mon films made. I had to find out why.
When I finished my HaleStorm inundation, I
realized that my friends were right. Structurally,
the movies need all kinds of work. But at the same
time, the Mormon filmmaking community could
learn a lot from HaleStorm.
I think I know why The Singles Ward and The
R.M. were such successful films. Simply, they were
the first Mormon date movies to hit the scene. A
bunch of people could gather in someone’s living
room with popcorn and soda, give the movie half
their attention and the other half to the lips of
the person sitting next to them, and have a great
time. They were the first movies to actively engage
a culture familiar to a Mormon audience with a
disposable income and time on their hands. I have
to admit, The Singles Ward and The R.M. found
many quirky areas of Mormon culture and played
on them, but the jokes were strung together much
as songs are connected in many Irving Berlin musi-
cals, such as Blue Skies (the sole premise for a song
often being the fact that the two main characters
are performers and are either writing, practicing,
or performing a song, which happens quite a lot).
However, the jokes were true to the culture, and it
was the first time the audience had seen such a pro-
duction outside of Boy Scout skits or road shows.
44 Irreantum
 Which is probably why these movies were so
painful for me to watch. I watched The Singles Ward
by myself, so I had only the movie upon which
to concentrate. It was not made for such close
viewing, especially after formally studying story
structure for the past three years. As far as I could
see, this screenplay committed pretty much all the
cardinal errors of story structure.
The first sin that reared its head was over-reliance
on narration. Narration itself isn’t such a bad thing,
if it is done right. A little well-placed narration can
get you past some background information quickly,
or it can set the tone for a film. But narration was
never meant to hold a film together entirely, which
was its heavy task in The Singles Ward. Take, for
example, the most egregious abuse of narration,
when John has left the “bad girl’s” apartment and
has spent an evening in his car on a hillside. When
morning breaks, he gets out of his car and explains
to the audience why he left the girl’s apartment,
which is a good thing, because we weren’t sure why
he left. Rule #1: your audience should know why
a character is doing what he or she is doing at the
moment he or she does it (unless you’re writing sus-
pense, in which case the motivations will become
clear in light of later actions, not narration). The
principle of aesthetic emotion requires that the writer
set up the meaning of an action so that when the
action comes about, it holds meaning for the audi-
ence immediately. If an audience can’t get meaning
from the actions of a character, explaining it is like
handing the viewer a crust of bread instead of an
eight-course meal. Unfortunately the entire movie
essentially followed this pattern: action, explanation.
Despite the rampant narration, the film is riddled
with unexplained events that try to function as major
turning points in the story line. For example, why
did Cammie befriend John at the singles dance?
Why did they go from fighting to kissing in one
scene? Why did the fact that John was previously
married not bother her? All these questions are very
important to the internal logic of the story and
could have been answered if the writers had taken
a little more time to develop the characters. Instead
they relied on movie clichés. Sure, we’ve seen won-
derful scenes where a couple goes from fighting to
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loving, but these scenes were well constructed. The
Singles Ward basically relied on our remembrance
of similar scenes in other movies that actually did
work and hoped we would let our memories do the
work that The Singles Ward scenes didn’t do.
Also, the film abused the principle of montage.
Montages, like narration, can be effective at setting
up the tone of the film or telling a background
story quickly. However, montages are no replace-
ment for a well-structured story line, especially
when it involves the main plot. We never got to
see how the relationship between John and Cam-
mie developed. It seemed that when they weren’t
fighting, they weren’t interesting enough anymore
to waste film on; so instead of actual relationship
development, we got a series of images depicting
the couple in run-of-the-mill dating situations
backed up by pleasant music. You can do that with
a subplot, but not with the main plot. Once again,
it was an easy—and in this case, ineffective—way
out of creating an actual relationship on screen.
The story ran into another problem at the end of
the movie when Cammie makes the decision to go
on a mission despite John’s protestations (I cheered
at this point, thinking we had an interesting plot
point coming). She says they both have to grow
up. And we know that it is actually John who needs
to do most of it. Essentially, this scene sets up the
audience for another story, the story of how John
and Cammie grew up over the course of a year and
a half. It could have been a very interesting story,
but, since we had already been sitting for an hour
and a half, we weren’t ready to head into another
hour, so the movie skips the story of John and
Cammie growing up and brings us to the end.
This is a problem that faces me a lot when I’m
writing my own screenplays: I think the story is
about one thing, when really it’s about another. I
find out the story that comes after the story I’m
writing is the much more interesting one. This is
the case in Singles Ward too. If I were to restructure
this story, I would spend the first twenty minutes
getting John and Cammie to the airport scene, then
spend the rest watching them grow up, the dramatic
question being, Will John and Cammie prove them-
selves? As many of the events in The Singles Ward
45 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
show us, there would be plenty of good obstacles to
put in their way.
The choice that flattened me the most, however,
was the decision to keep the most important events
of the story off screen. For example, the transition
from the fight between John and Cammie to their
kissing needed to be onscreen. Sure, it was funny
that we saw an image of them fighting juxtaposed
with an image of them kissing—that’s comedy—
but the missing transition was important to the
logic of the story. What was it about those two
that could take them to such extremes? Working
this out would have made for a much funnier and
satisfying scene.
But the most surprising nonexistent scene was
the final reunion of John and Cammie. The movie
sets up the audience for a reunion when Cammie
chooses to go on a mission instead of accepting
John’s proposal. In fact, the uniting of lovers is
the promise the movie makes to us from the very
beginning. It’s the emotional payoff. So when the
promised scene finally comes, we’re biting our nails
expecting Cammie to step gloriously off the plane,
but instead a minor character stumbles in. Admit-
tedly it’s a good comedy setup: make the audience
expect one thing, then give them another. But it
was the scene we had all been waiting for! It was
the climax, for Pete’s sake, even if it was delayed.
Instead of a passionate kiss, what do we get? We get
to watch John and Cammie give a talk in church.
Pshaw.
Why did the filmmakers do this to us? Well,
we could call it a false ending. Bringing the minor
character in instead of Cammie could have been
orchestrated to raise the emotional impact of her
real appearance. Something similar has been done
effectively before. But it seems that the filmmak-
ers pulled the rug out from under the audience in
this case for the same reason they did pretty much
everything in the movie: to get a laugh.
Like I said, a great date movie.
The next day, I watched The R.M. From what I
had heard, it was an improvement over The Singles
Ward, and I was looking forward to it. I must admit,
the camera work is much better, and the plastic dog
hanging onto the hero’s foot was the funniest bit
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
of camp I have seen since Ed Wood. I even laughed
out loud at some genuinely funny spots, like the
jewelry shop subtly turning into a bar that serves
Coke, the scene that turns into a television ad for
UtahWeddings.com, and the scene in the Filth
Filters telemarketing room. It was at these early
moments in the film that hope stirred within my
breast. But, alas, in vain.
In The Singles Ward, the story had one very pow-
erful thing going for it. The main character had a
goal, and the majority of the film showed him try-
ing to obtain that goal. Thus, we knew where the
movie was going. Not so with The R.M. I was fine
with the newly returned Jared’s hopes being dashed
for the first twenty minutes of the film. That’s a
good setup. But by the end of the first act, the hero
should have found a goal and started to pursue it.
At first I thought Jared’s goal would be getting the
new girl, but she showed up only every now and
again. And when she did show up, it was mostly to
put Jared in an embarrassing situation.
Then I thought Jared’s goal would be to get 100
percent home teaching, but that goal took a back
seat pretty much immediately. Then I thought the
goal would be to get rid of the ring. Good plot that:
he tries more and more elaborate schemes to get rid
of the ring, then finally at the end he needs it back
but must go through hell and back to get it. That’s
comedy. But it was mashed into the backseat along
with every other plotline, the number of which I
lost track.
Judging by the climax of the film, the major plot
line was: Can our hero keep his integrity and help
his wayward friend back to the fold? And he does
both. The problem is, the audience never has any
doubt that the hero will keep his integrity; he does
it the entire movie. One more test isn’t going to
change anything. It’s true that the stakes are raised
at the end (the threat of going to jail if he didn’t
go along with the lawyer’s concocted story), but
it wasn’t enough to make me worry about him.
Also, this particular trial wasn’t set up until at least
three-fourths of the way into the film, making it,
structurally, a subplot. The main plot needs to be
introduced by the end of the first act in order to
pack the necessary punch.
46 Irreantum
 In addition, the love plot was disappointing. The
story kept telling me that I was going to see young
love budding, but, just as in The Singles Ward, it
was reduced to a montage at the end of the movie.
Even after these criticisms, I’m under the impres-
sion that the writers of these two films, John Moyer
and Kurt Hale, are not stupid. In fact, I think that
somewhere in the back of their minds they saw
many of their flaws, because they make jokes out
of them. For example, in The Singles Ward, just
as John’s epiphany explanation is winding up, his
friends appear and tell him he’s acting like a semi-
nary video. They’re right, of course. However, the
film moves on, saying, essentially, yeah, it was a
pathetic epiphany scene, but you’re going to let us
get away with it because we made fun of it before
you did. The problem is, weak epiphany scenes
lead to weak climaxes, which lead to a weak emo-
tional response from the audience. All of which
occurred.
Interestingly, the structural flaws in both of
these movies point to what I think are HaleStorm’s
strengths. It’s true that they haven’t been able to
structure a good story for us yet. They’ve relied
almost completely on inside jokes: multilevel mar-
keting, the singles ward loser, mission calls, Mor-
mon merchandizing, etc., and haven’t been able
to integrate them into the plot as a whole. But
essentially what we’re seeing here are standup com-
ics who have stumbled into the wrong medium.
The standup comedy routine has exactly the same
structure of The Singles Ward and The R.M.: funny
bits loosely strung together.
So it comes as no surprise to me that HaleStorm
put out Latter-day Night Live, a series of standup
comedy routines for Mormons. That’s just up their
alley. I haven’t seen it, but it seems that such an
attempt is perfect for their particular talents.
The Home Teachers is HaleStorm’s current movie.
I have the feeling that, unless the writers hired a
story consultant this time around, we’ll get another
structurally weak screenplay with some funny bits
here and there. A good date movie. What I hope
is that this time around, the writers play on their
strengths and put most of their effort into creating
funny scenes like the UtahWeddings.com scene
Irreantum
and keep us laughing that way. Think The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie or Monty Python’s Now
for Something Completely Different.
There is certainly one very good bit of advice
Mormon filmmakers can take from HaleStorm Enter-
tainment, and that is to get off your high horse and
make some comedies. As the box office numbers
indicate, most people go to the movies to have a
social experience, to be entertained without having
to invest too much emotion. Read: comedies. Like
it or not, that’s the way it goes. If there’s one thing
the Mormon movie market needs right now, it’s a
structurally sound comedy. I know that there are
Mormon filmmakers out there who can do it.
Think about Ingmar Bergman. He spent twenty
years making romances before he did any of the
stuff we revere today. He got his practice in romance;
he also got his money. Even if the writers at Hale-
Storm lack ability right now, they’re making the
money they need for their next project, which will
get them practice, which means that eventually
they’ll get better. In fact, it may already be happen-
ing. At 2004’s LDS Film Festival, John Moyer made
the semifinals in the screenplay contest. Mean-
while, we artsy-fartsy types write these deep things
that either never get produced or lose money (my
screenplay didn’t even make the first cut at the LDS
Film Festival, putting me out the twenty-five-dollar
entry fee). I want the deep stuff as much as anyone
else, but please don’t be afraid to take the Bergman
route.
Stephen Carter is finishing up an MFA degree in
creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
and writes satirical Mormon news for The Sugar
Beet.
47 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 E s s a y
Movie Moratorium
By Alan Rex Mitchell
L ast September, AML-List members posted their
umpteenth opinion on recent Mormon movies,
and I had had enough and called for a three-month
moratorium on box office criticism and discussion.
My argument was that cinema is a poor medium
for communicating spiritual values. I took a few
blows to the chin for my apparently politically
incorrect stance, but, now that I have returned
from sensitivity training (Jon Enos’s hour-long
film writing workshop at the last AML writing
conference), I would like to clarify my position
on contemporary films and the fledgling Mormon
cinema. First and foremost . . .
Films tell simple moral conflicts. As docu-
mented in the book A Beautiful Mind,1 Nobel
Prize–winning mathematician John Forbes Nash
Jr. had a lengthy extramarital affair that resulted in
an illegitimate son. The deed had repercussions for
the remainder of his life, although it may be easy
to excuse Nash’s behavior because he was gradually
going insane. But the Ron Howard–directed movie
did not include this chapter, which would have
given a gritty texture to the biographical film. Why
not?
I think we all know. Addressing John Nash’s sex
life (which was not limited to a single affair or gen-
der) would have spoiled the tidiness of the movie
and its characters. More than that, Nash’s faithful
wife Alicia would have looked like a floor mat even
though she made difficult life decisions that few
would call wrong. The film simplified the multifac-
eted conflict into the single-minded struggle against
paranoid schizophrenia because . . .
Films are just too short. They are the con-
densed version. The movie Seabiscuit portrayed the
owner’s (Charles Howard) estrangement from his
wife and subsequent romance and marriage to a
younger woman. Younger here is relative—Charles
was forty-six and Annie twenty-nine, nothing like
what we read in the Bible.2 The book Seabiscuit3
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
delves deeper into his second marriage, pointing
out that Annie was the older sister of Howard’s
oldest son’s wife. While marrying a daughter-in-
law’s sister is not illegal and Howard wasn’t even
close to being his own grandpa, he was, in fact, his
own son’s brother-in-law. His new wife, an actress,
assumed the real-life role as her kid-sister’s mother-
in-law. Now, there’s a family conflict waiting to
happen! Why wasn’t this in the movie?
I think we all know. Family relations complicate
matters. As a generation of movie addicts, we sense
what will work and what will detract from the 100-
minute presentation. Producers and directors don’t
want the movie to drag, so they hurry character
description and development. One shortcut is to
use established actors and capitalize on their theat-
rical personas: Bruce Willis for tough guy, Martin
Short for gadfly, etc.
Character development was a shortcoming of
the movie Seabiscuit, relative to the book. The take-
home message of both was that the racehorse had
helped the characters overcome the Great Depres-
sion. This message was repeated twice in the film,
perhaps out of fear that the audience wouldn’t get
it. Evidently, it’s extremely difficult to cinemati-
cally portray the deep and much-fabled emotion
of gratitude toward a horse. The book’s themes of
work, perseverance, luck, and bonding were con-
densed into a thundering stampede within the film.
Movies are, in the end, Little Classics of Moby Dick
in sixteen pages. Well might we ask . . .
What is the reason for Mormon art—and
cinema—to exist? Gideon Burton has suggested
that the goal of Mormon art is to produce artis-
tic innovations and spiritual contributions both
within and beyond Mormon culture.4 He noted
that, inasmuch as Mormon moviemakers seek to
follow their contemporary American counterparts,
they will be severely handicapped when seeking
to make spiritual contributions. Simply put, new
artistic functions require new art forms.
Similarly, Richard Cracroft has described Mor-
mon art as having “this covenant theology that has
moved Saints, from 1830 to the present, to flee
Babylon, sacrifice the world, and cross the spiritual
plains to Zion, forging en route an evolving latter-
48 Irreantum
day mythos that becomes the soil—not merely a
sprayed-on nutrient—for the Latter-day Saint poet.”5
To artistically portray this covenant, or contract,
with the Almighty, it seems necessary to show pre-
cisely what a lowly man thinks about the arrange-
ment. There is a scene near the end of Cool Hand
Luke when Luke confronts God before facing the
sharp-shooting guard. “I’m a hard case, I know.
Yeah, I guess you’re a hard case too.” Luke was the
exception; movies rarely succeed in showing what a
character thinks. Cinema can efficiently show what
a character feels, what he wants, and his emotional
responses to obstacles, but what he thinks is mostly
a mystery. This is because . . .
Films rarely get into the character’s head. The
Graduate is one of the best films of our generation
and a personal favorite. I remember watching it for
the first time when I was twenty-two years old and
could relate to Benjamin. (Don’t tell my mother I
went to see it—she saw it in 1964 and was repulsed
by the story of seduction by an older woman.) The
music by Simon and Garfunkel was bold and per-
fectly complemented the story. The extraordinary
acting by Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman pro-
pelled the relative unknowns into decades of star-
dom. The movie affected the way I felt for days. It
masterfully portrayed the angst of youth by telling
a story of liberation—not Benjamin stealing the
bride from the church wedding, but Benjamin being
rescued from the plastic culture of his parents.
That said, it didn’t really affect what I thought. I
didn’t believe, or learn, or experience anything new
or profound.
Books, on the other hand, have a better chance
of describing what the hero thinks and why, thus
increasing the chances that the reader will integrate
some of the philosophy into his worldview, or pos-
sibly entrenching the reader against the philosophy.
Crime and Punishment explained what rationaliza-
tion Raskolnikov had for theft and murder. A reader
can get into his head in a frightening manner. But
The Graduate didn’t explain Benjamin’s rationaliza-
tion of his moral code as he paid for the hotel room.
It didn’t reveal if he was attracted to Mrs. Robinson
for any reason other than boredom or attracted
to Elaine for anything other than beauty. And it
Irreantum
thankfully didn’t tell us what Elaine was thinking as
she was rescued in the last scene. Now that was a girl
who had it all together and found a reliable man!
Finally, it didn’t tell us why Mrs. Robinson chose
the path she did or whether she ever discovered that
Jesus loves her more than she could know.
We could use the prophet Mormon’s litmus test
for morality: Did The Graduate invite the viewer to
do good? Or to come unto Christ? 6 I can imagine
myself sitting in Bishop Mormon’s office across the
wooden desk. I would probably answer that the film
gave me insight into the game of Babylon versus
Zion, Babylon being, of course, Ben’s aversion to
plastic and Zion being, uh, let me think . . . his
eventual fixation on younger women?
As a whole, The Graduate fell short on providing
knowledge or insight about moral decisions, life
decisions, or any decisions, and that was one of the
best movies of our time. Have I set up this movie as
a straw man? I suggest we could take any film and
find that where it succeeded best is precisely where
it failed most. The Graduate had us believing that
Elaine could really love Benjamin after the affair
with her mother. Casablanca had us believing that
the heroine would really choose a tavern owner
over her hero husband. Citizen Kane had us believing
that the billionaire publishing magnate’s foremost
love was a sled. The Godfather had us believing that
bad guys are sorta good guys. Cinema does this by
employing artistic devises to emotionally convince
us to suspend disbelief (dude, mafia guys are okay!)
and buy into the story—which works as long as we
avoid examining it. Even I hate it when a friend logi-
cally picks apart a movie that I found endearing.
A reader’s relationships with books are, on the
other hand, more cerebral and personal. One can
pause during the reading, a gift not allowed by
film, and decide for oneself where one stands with
the character and the author’s worldview. One likes
parts and hates parts and judges whether the book
is personally worthwhile, but . . .
Movies are entertainment, and that’s not nec-
essarily a bad criterion if we stay aware of what is
being sold. Entertainment does not necessarily equal
morality—in fact, morality is often viewed as ter-
ribly out of place in romantic comedy. For example,
49 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
several reviewers were puzzled that HaleStorm Enter-
tainment’s The R.M.7 took a humorous look at the
same twenty-two-year-old angst (if Benjamin had
been a Mormon missionary to Wyoming), then
tried to cram a morality play into the last fifteen
minutes, as if the moralizing makes the silliness
worthwhile. Do the HaleStorm guys attend Bishop
Mormon’s ward? In other words . . .
Does Mormon cinema need a moral? When
we line up for tickets to Church Basketball, will we
be anticipating what great principle will be taught?
Can we look to the Mormon movie genre to satisfy
Cracroft’s yearning for covenant theology or the
feelings of the spirit that Mormons prize? Or should
Mormon movies merely follow the same model
of contemporary filmmaking? Before addressing
these questions, we should realize there are other
obstacles to the goal of portraying covenant theol-
ogy. First . . .
Films are visual (no duh!). They can describe
a setting and a mood much faster and more
accurately than books. In the visual medium,
well-proportioned geometry is pleasing to the eye.
Variations in color, line, and space bring variety
that is beautiful.
The downside to this maxim is that geometry
equals virtue. Contemporary films require good-
looking actors as heroes and disproportionate actors
as villains. There is an early scene in Schwarzeneg-
ger’s Last Action Hero where the boy tells Arnold
that they have left reality and entered into a movie
because all the women are between ages twenty and
thirty and extremely attractive. Dissertations could
be written about how movies have reinforced the
false myth that the beauty of the flesh is the same
as beauty of spirit.
Most good literature (and experience) teaches us
the opposite—that you cannot judge a book by its
cover. According to H. L. Mencken, just because a
rose looks and smells better than a cabbage doesn’t
mean it will make a better soup. The same is
true for good-looking (or bad-smelling) men and
women. However . . .
Audio is forever (buy the soundtrack!). The
Julia Roberts film Runaway Bride was fun and for-
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
gettable, but the music was excellent. Don’t tell the
music industry police, but I copied the soundtrack,
which features U2, Dixie Chicks, Shawn Colvin,
Martina McBride, Eric Clapton, and Miles Davis.
Films use music to manipulate mood and emotion.
Who can forget the echoing bass that brought ten-
sion to the beach scenes in Jaws—even if the shark
was just a swimmer with a fin?
Time out for a commercial. Setting it to the
jazz of Blood, Sweat and Tears, I’ve written a screen-
play for a contemporary Mormon movie that would
be the finest buddy film since 48 Hours and deals
with issues of race, religion, and morality. Call eve-
nings if you have a close personal connection with
Toby Maguire, because we all know that . . .
Actors carry films. Recall how Richard Dutcher
was disappointed in the audience for his film
Brigham City? My wife immediately knew that the
problem was casting. For the role of police chief in
a small, isolated Western town, the producer needed
to rely on the tried-and-true Western frontier sheriff
persona—someone like Tom Selleck. Imagine his
Magnum character carrying the burden of his lost
family and comforting his frightened town and
beating the crap out of the porn addict. Imagine
Magnum’s heart breaking as he confronts his deputy
and sits on the stand in sacrament meeting.
I can hear Dutcher screaming that he didn’t
have the ten million to shell out for Tom Selleck,
and I’m going to back off on that critique because
that’s not my point. My point is that good-looking
actors with established film personas often make
the movie. If you, like I, believe Tom Selleck could
have made Brigham City into a blockbuster, then
that should reveal that contemporary American
movies are short, simple stories told with familiar
actors and personas. In contrast . . .
Mormonism is cavernous.8 It is the reenact-
ment of the God/Man discourse and the restora-
tion of the covenant. Of course, no dozen films will
do Mormonism justice, although even the least of
today’s Mormon cinema may speak to individuals.
Far be it for me to limit the time and manner that
the Holy Spirit can speak to our hearts. Recently
a missionary told our ward that his first spiritual
50 Irreantum
experience came while he was pondering religion
in his car to the music of Queen and saw a bumper
sticker that read, God lives. If this is true (and I
have no reason to doubt it), it may explain why
some in the Latter-day Saint audience will enjoy
any Mormon flick.
Suppose we encounter the Great Mormon Film.
Imagine driving to the local mall and slapping
down seven bucks for a Mormon genre film, then
coming out feeling like the movie told your latter-
day story, or the story of a fellow traveler, full of the
spirit and light and truth. Suppose you wept for the
struggles of the hero and yet felt uplifted, like saints
who weep in fast and testimony meeting while a
fellow saint tells a heartfelt testimony. Now realize
that if such a film worked . . .
It would be labeled as propaganda by the
UCLA theater department because of its short,
simple story, handsome, convincing actors, comple-
mentary musical score, and the simple resolution
of problems with convenient solutions. But that
doesn’t change one’s feeling that it was an authentic
story. Of course, the critics would be correct: To
the extent that we achieve Mormon-themed success
in the contemporary film model, we are approach-
ing propaganda.
Which is not necessarily bad. I hope I have
defused disagreement by delineating the differ-
ence between feelings refined by film and the strict
spirituality that moves minds and morals. Actually,
I haven’t said anything that is news to Burton, who
suggests that if Mormon cinema seeks to make spiri-
tual contributions, it might need a new approach
in order to succeed. He observed that other cine-
matic traditions have been born not from attempts
to imitate the success of conventional cinema but
from attempts to actively resist its aesthetics and
ideology. He even imagined a world where Gover-
nor Boggs reemerged to give the Mormons a cause
to rebel against!
I think Burton is saying that Mormon cinema
should be to popular cinema what Mormonism is
to popular culture and what Zion is to Babylon: a
light on the hill and a pain in the neck. Pop culture
is best summarized as a teenager: impulsive, hur-
Irreantum
ried, stressed, disdaining past wisdom, relying on
moods that are controlled by hormones, emotion-
ally dependent on music, trusting in appearances,
etc. Hopefully this cross-section is not the entire
culture, but it is largely this demographic segment
that buys movie tickets. HaleStorm Entertainment’s
(relative) success was in understanding the Mor-
mon moviegoer market and peddling cultural
comedy. But do not despair. Like charity . . .
Authentic voice can cover a multitude of sins.
For example: God’s Army succeeded with the sym-
pathetic tones of the tentative Elder Allen thrown
into a lion’s den of religion. Perhaps HaleStorm’s
much-maligned (and attended) Singles Ward attracted
viewers because it had voices that are familiar to us:
a fence-sitting divorced member speaking directly
to the camera and a holier-than-thou Relief Society
president nagging him. It succeeded while other
Mormon films have bombed because the audience
could relate. Remember, there is nothing more
authentic than . . .
Prayer, because it is the soul’s sincere desire.
We need more of it in film. At least prayer could
provide the trappings of the God/Man discourse
and let us enter the hero’s head and his struggles
with the moral code, his past, and his present
enemies. Think Luke; think Tevya in Fiddler on
the Roof; think O Brother, Where Art Thou; think
John Denver in Oh God! On a personal note, I’m
contemplating writing another screenplay that will
be an ongoing conversation with God reviewing
the film of my life, much like the hypothetical
screening that seminary teachers use to explain the
Final Judgment. It would be a prayer from the first
minute to the last, and I’ll call it . . .
Being Alan Mitchell. It will come out and say
what the character thinks, and, of course, every
now and then I will freeze the frame and talk to the
camera like Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off and plead my case, or show the favorable
scenes a second time from a different angle, or
invoke the repentance amendment for censorship
of a few embarrassing scenes . . .
So purist reviewers won’t like it. High-minded
producers will disdain the deletion of the ugly
51 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
scenes. Professional filmmakers will giggle at the
poor production values. Burton will wish he had
edited the story. HaleStorm will crunch the num-
bers and make me an offer for distribution rights
in the nether lands. And the Highest Critic will
probably say he liked the book better anyway.
Alan Rex Mitchell is a novelist, scientist, farmer, father,
humorist, and, most recently, a screenwriter. His first
screenplay, That’s Got His Own, was a finalist in the
third LDS film festival (2004), and he believes that
Mormon literature needs a classical period. He can be
reached at alan@trilobyte.net.
Meridian Magazine, January 31, 2003, www.meridian
magazine.com/arts/030131rm.html.
8. “The things of God are of deep import; and time,
and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn
thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if
thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high
as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate
the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity.
Thou must commune with God” (Joseph Fielding Smith,
comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Deseret
Book, 1972], 137).

Notes
1. Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John
Forbes Nash Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics,
1994 (Simon and Schuster, 1998).
2. For example, Abraham married Keturah (Gen.
25:1) after Sarah’s death at age 127 (Gen. 23:1–2). See
also 1 Kings 1:1–4.
3. Laura Hildebrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend
(Ballantine Books, 2002).
4. Gideon Burton, “Making Mormon Cinema: Hype
and Hope,” in Art, Belief, Meaning: The Visual Arts and
the Restored Gospel, ed. Herman du Toit and Doris R.
Dant, vol. 1 (BYU Museum of Art, 2001).
5. Richard Cracroft, review of Harvest: Contemporary
Mormon Poems ed. Eugene England and Dennis Clark,
in BYU Studies 30.2 (1990): 119–23; available online at
humanities.byu.edu/mldb/cracrevh.htm.
6. Moroni 7:16–17: “For behold, the Spirit of Christ
is given to every man, that he may know good from evil;
wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every
thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to
believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of
Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge
it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do
evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve
not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge
it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil
work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not
one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject
themselves unto him.”
7. For example, Audrey Rock-Richardson, Tooele (Utah)
Transcript-Bulletin, January 31, 2003, available online at
www.rottentomatoes.com. Also, Thomas C. Baggaley,

Winter 2003/Spring 2004 52 Irreantum

 R e p o r t
Indie Mormon Cinema Attempts a
Mainstream Conversion
By Ed Halter
Editor’s note: The following is reprinted from New
York City’s Village Voice as an outside perspective on
the Mormon Cinema boom. It originally appeared on
January 16, 2004.
S undance is no longer Utah’s only indie-cinema
foothold. In the past few years, the state has
played host to an unprecedented surge in feature
films made by Mormons, for Mormons, and set
within the Mormon world. In the smut-pop age
of raunchy teen comedies, a driven cadre of local
companies is tapping a market for squeaky-clean
entertainment, custom-made for the Mormons’
own G-rated culture. In 2003, no fewer than six
theatrical features made by Latter-day Saint direc-
tors, about LDS characters, had limited releases,
mostly in Mormon-heavy Western states, accord-
ing to LDS Film (LDSfilm.com, which also com-
piles data on well-known LDS filmmakers like
Don Bluth and Neil LaBute). Mormon director
Jared Hess’s teen comedy, Napoleon Dynamite,
premiered at Sundance last week. Now some pro-
ducers are eyeing the mainstream, and C. Jay Cox’s
Latter Days, a film about gay Mormons that opens
January 30 in New York, Los Angeles, and Salt
Lake City, is already courting controversy.
Director Richard Dutcher’s seriocomic mission-
ary narrative God’s Army (2000) is widely recog-
nized as the film that unleashed the current boom,
which some have tried to name “Mollywood” (from
“Molly Mormon,” an archetypal Mormon woman),
though it hasn’t quite stuck. Still considered a high-
water mark in terms of quality and box office, Army
cemented its distributor, the Salt Lake City– based
Excel Entertainment Group, as LDS cinema’s first
micro-major. According to Excel head Jeff Simp-
son, a former Disney executive, Mormon cinema as
such did not exist prior to Dutcher’s crossover hit,
which grossed over $2.6 million. “There were some
Irreantum
Mormon characters in Hollywood,” says Simpson.
“But they were generally treated stereotypically.
Like any niche groups—gay, blacks—Mormons
were treated as caricatures.”
The successes of gay and black filmmaking in
the 1990s provided a model for Excel, which has
pursued grassroots marketing strategies for the four
LDS-themed releases it has launched following
God’s Army’s success. Once primarily a distributor
of faith-based music, Excel now has a slate that
includes Dutcher’s small-town thriller Brigham City
(2001); Charly (2002), based on a bestselling
Mormon novel; and Pride & Prejudice (2003), a
comedy that restages Jane Austen’s novel in the
dating scene of a Brigham Young University–like
school. The company is readying the WW II drama
Saints and Soldiers for a spring release. In addition
to leveraging its relationships with LDS bookstores
worldwide, Excel deploys classic indie techniques.
“We have what would look like a political boiler
room,” Simpson says, “with folks keeping track of
‘super fans,’ and we’ll do special things for them.
We’ll send them autographed copies of this or that
and try to keep them on our side. We try to create
a network of fans to help spread the word.”
Though theatrical releases are new, a Mormon
cinema of sorts has existed for decades within the
church, according to Tom Lefler, associate chair of
the BYU media arts department, where many of
the current crop of LDS filmmakers were trained.
The heyday of the Mormon educational film was
the ’60s and ’70s, after the church established the
LDS Motion Picture Studio at BYU. “The films
were doctrinally relevant pieces that were primarily
used in church settings,” Lefler says, “to teach a
moral or a concept embedded in a story.” In recent
years, Oscar-winning IMAX director (and LDS
member) Kieth Merrill has produced large-format
religious films for the church. Lefler reports that
Merrill’s hour-long 70mm film, The Testaments of
One Fold and One Shepherd (2000), an epic retell-
ing of episodes from the Bible and the Book of
Mormon that screens regularly at the Joseph Smith
Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, had a higher
production budget than any Mormon-themed
commercial release.
53 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Unlike their evangelical Christian counterparts,
Mormon distributors avoid marketing within the
church. “In the LDS world,” says Simpson, “the
church itself will not—and we don’t think should—
get involved in the commercial aspect of anything.
I know that sometimes in the Christian world,
with films like [1999 biblical prophesy thriller]
The Omega Code, a distributor gets ahold of a local
church and has them get the word out to the con-
gregation. Not so in the LDS world. It very much
has to be a cultural thing.”
A more hands-off approach to depicting doc-
trine has so far been the norm for Mormon cinema.
A major exception is The Book of Mormon Movie,
Volume I: The Journey, a low-budget adaptation—
made privately, without official church endorse-
ment or sponsorship—that aimed for a version of
great religious epics like The Ten Commandments
but opened in Utah to lukewarm reviews last fall.
HaleStorm Entertainment has fared better with
a hit string of quickie youth comedies. Its first film,
The Singles Ward, takes place in a twentysomething
congregation; The R.M. depicts the wacky exploits
of a young “returned missionary”; The Home Teach-
ers puts a Tommy Boy buddy-comedy spin on the
LDS custom of door-to-door scripture education;
and the group is currently finishing Sons of Provo,
a mockumentary about a Mormon boy band com-
plete with hyper-pop songs like “Word of Wizzum”
and “Diddly Wack Mack Mormon Daddy.” Even
the Mollywood boom itself has been spoofed:
Another LDS company, Do It Now, produced The
Work and The Story, a Spinal Tap–esque profile of
wannabe Mormon Spielbergs (complete with a
Richard Dutcher cameo).
HaleStorm’s tiny budgets are raised in part
through partnerships with other LDS-based com-
panies, including Mormon dating websites and
a company that sells V-chip-style software that
removes family-unfriendly content from Holly-
wood films. “We have one more film that we shoot
in June—Church Ball—and from there we’ll take a
year break and figure out how to crack the bigger
nut,” says HaleStorm producer Dave Hunter, grand-
son of an LDS president and prophet. “We plan to
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
move up to non-Mormon films—clean, family-fare
comedy stuff that plays to a larger audience.”
Simpson says he too is “always looking for a
crossover,” citing My Big Fat Greek Wedding as an
ideal. “Excel sees itself primarily as a company that
tries to identify niches, a matchmaker between art
and audience. Our biggest expertise is the LDS
audience. But we’re looking at applying that track
record to other demographics.” Crossing over
is complex for LDS filmmakers, as the culture
draws sensitive boundaries between itself and what
Mormons call the “gentile” world. Lefler recalls
that some thought that the depiction of a church
ritual in God’s Army breached propriety. Much of
HaleStorm’s comedy springs from tweaking LDS
cultural norms, thus sharply limiting their humor’s
audience.
Sweet Home Alabama screenwriter C. Jay Cox’s
directorial debut, Latter Days, takes on a more
potent taboo—the church’s decidedly antigay
stance (which also played a part in Angels in Amer-
ica). “Latter Days fits into the Mormon framework
the same way that Kevin Smith’s Dogma fits into
Catholic films,” says Cox, who was raised in a five-
generations-LDS family in Nevada. In Cox’s film,
a devout Mormon meets an openly gay man while
on a mission in Los Angeles; both men experience
their own awakenings, sexual and spiritual. Already,
Cox reports that small towns in Utah are circulat-
ing petitions to ban his film. “There is this part of
me that is still a gay, nineteen-year-old missionary,”
says Cox, who hopes that “just some of those kinds
of kids could see this movie and realize, I’m going
to be OK, I’m not going to go to hell—that there
are alternatives to what they are being told.”
54 Irreantum
 R e p o r t
Dave Wolverton Pursues
Big-Budget Movie Project
By Robyn Heirtzler
Editor’s note: Originally appearing in the Hurricane
Valley Journal, a small newspaper in southern Utah,
the following article details the movie-making ambi-
tions of best-selling LDS novelist Dave Wolverton.
D ave Wolverton leaned back in his office chair
as he recalled the moment he realized he
wanted to be a movie producer. “Growing up, I
didn’t know what I wanted to be,” he says. “The
other children all knew. They wanted to be cow-
boys or Indians. My brother wanted to be a garbage
truck driver, because they were so strong. But I had
no idea what I wanted to do.” Nine months of won-
dering and obsessing came to an end as he watched
a special about Walt Disney. “That’s what I want to
do,” he told his parents. “I want to be him.”
“But no one can be like Walt Disney,” they said.
“Real people don’t have those kinds of jobs.”
“If they’d realized the kind of determination I had,”
says Wolverton, “they would have bought stock.”
Wolverton began his career as a prize writer in
college, writing mainstream stories, and was doing
quite well when in 1986 he submitted a story to
the Writers of the Future Contest—the world’s
largest contest for amateur science fiction and
fantasy authors—and won the Gold Award for the
year. Publishers approached Wolverton to see if he
would write a novel, and within a couple of weeks
he had a three-book deal with Bantam. He began
his career in science fiction, though his real passion
lay in fantasy.
His first novel hit high on the bestseller lists, was
hailed by critics as “one of the deepest and most
powerful science fiction novels ever written,” and
won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Special Award as
one of the best novels of the year.
So his career began. But after years of successfully
writing in the science fiction genre, he decided he
didn’t want to be tied down, and he assumed the
Irreantum
pen name David Farland. His fantasy series, The
Runelords, took off, hitting the bestseller lists in
several countries.
He’s now fulfilling his dream as few authors have
ever done. He’s producing his own movie from his
own bestselling novel, the first Runelords book.
What would possess an author to become his
own producer? Wolverton explains it this way: “Why
write a short story that will make $400 when you
could write a novel based on the same idea that will
earn $50,000? Why stop at a novel when you could
turn the idea into a movie worth half a million?
And why create a single novel worth half a million,
when you could create a franchise that may be worth
billions?”
When an author signs a contract to have his book
made into a movie, he’s offered a set amount of
money, and he’s done. He never sees any of the big
profits from merchandise and tie-ins. So Wolverton
decided to follow the money trail and see just who
was making the big money. “Many moderately suc-
cessful producers were living in huge mansions in
Hollywood with swimming pools, and then there
were the actors driving beat-up old Fords,” Wolver-
ton says. “So I decided I wanted to be behind the
camera instead of in front of it.”
Perhaps the only way to pull more out of a movie
than the producer is to become a distributor, like
Warner Brothers or Universal. “When you’re your
own distributor, you can line up financing easier
because you’ve got your American distribution in
hand. And it also gives you the freedom to make
any movie you want—freedom which you may not
have if you’re working with a studio.” Wolverton
admits he may work into this in the future. “It’s the
logical thing to do. I admire the way that Mel Gib-
son, for example, used his profits from Braveheart
to purchase foreign distribution companies. It was
a very shrewd move.”
Dave Wolverton, writing as David Farland, began
his Runelords novels with the idea of making it big.
He designed the novels to be adapted into movies,
video games, and other mediums.
Soon after, he met John Lee, a consultant
to producers, who explained to him how he
approached the sale and distribution of movies.
55 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Though other producers might think of John’s
approach as a bit unorthodox, since it’s both time-
consuming and expensive, Wolverton says, “I could
see instantly that his plan was brilliant. Basically, he
was approaching movie sales in the same way that
I approached the sale of a major novel. He presold
the movie in as many territories as possible and
used the advance to finance the making of the film.
There were new layers of strategy that I hadn’t used
before, but aside from the fact that it can cost three
or four million dollars just to create a solid movie
proposal, it was very much like what I was already
doing in the book and videogame fields.”
As a producer, Wolverton has more control than
most authors over the creation of his film. He
pitches the movie, secures money for the film, lines
up global distribution, hires the director and some
of the key actors, and pretty much has final say over
any changes from the book to screen.
Pitching a movie idea is tough, Wolverton
explains. A lot of studios have their own projects,
and if you’re an outsider, they’re not as likely to
distribute your film. They have strong financial
incentives to move their own projects forward first.
This didn’t discourage Wolverton at all, who says,
“If you have a compelling story, someone will get
excited about it.”
With Lee’s help, they’ve found a way in a back
door. While the big studios may not be easy to
approach, since they are often playing a defensive
game, there are smaller studios that have output
deals—preexisting distribution agreements—with
those major studios. And since these companies are
smaller, they’re playing more of an offensive game.
Wolverton has not taken it upon himself to write
his own screenplay, but he has worked carefully
with the screenwriter, Terry Kahn, to make sure his
film has the intended effect. It’s a different type of
writing, he explains. Although he has the final say,
Wolverton is also open to suggestion. “My goal
isn’t to force my own vision on others. A director
or visual effects designer may have an idea on how
to make the flameweavers more interesting, for
example, and I’m fine with that.” He may take that
suggestion and incorporate it into the film, making
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
it better. On the other hand, “I also get to tell them
when their ideas are less than brilliant.”
With Wolverton as the author and producer,
will his movie portray the novel? Not exactly. He
says, “The great thing about working on a novel
that I wrote seven years ago is that I’ve had more
experience since and now have a chance to fix my
mistakes. And the fact is that what works in a book
doesn’t always work in a movie. So, for example,
in the movie, I’ll have the chance to portray the
ending as I’d envisioned it from the beginning. The
ending I wanted was too visual to put into a book.”
But on screen he can fulfill that vision.
There are also problems with internal dialogue
that cannot be transferred easily from a book to
the screen. To account for this, he has stepped back
in time, taking a look into the childhood of the
main character, Gaborn. This allows him to visu-
ally explain his magic system and the events that
shaped Gaborn’s outlook on life.
Wolverton is also working closely with designers
to make his monsters appear as lifelike as possible.
“I don’t want stale creatures. I want them to appear
to be real animals.” He wants his creatures to be
as good as or better than the dinosaurs in the first
Jurassic Park movie. He’s defined his creatures’
habits and habitats, taking up to three months to
design just one of the monsters to be featured in
this film.
Wolverton worked on short films for film fes-
tivals, and it gave him some great experience, but
Runelords is in an entirely different realm. “The
movie will cost between sixty and seventy-five mil-
lion,” he says. “We’ll need another forty-five million
or more for advertising.”
He says, “This has been both the hardest and
the easiest thing I’ve ever done. The hours are long,
and you spend a good amount of time banging
your head into walls.” However, he says that he
wouldn’t go back and undo it. In fact, if this film
does well enough, there are a second and third
Runelords that will be hitting the big screen. “It
has been easy in the sense that John’s strategies have
worked like a charm. As a new producer, I’ve been
surprised at how easy it has been to sell this film.”
56 Irreantum
 Dave Wolverton is the author of more than F i l m
forty books. He has written adult novels, young N o v e l i z a t i o n
adult novels, middle grade books, children’s books, E x c e r p t
and poetry. His latest Runelords book, The Lair of
Bones, written under the name of David Farland,
was recently released, and he is now working on the
Brigham City
fifth novel in the Runelords series, which deals with By Marilyn Brown
a whole new set of major characters.
Editor’s note: The following is an early preview of
Robyn Heirtzler is managing editor of the Hurricane Marilyn Brown’s novelization-in-progress of Richard
Valley Journal. Dutcher’s film Brigham City.

Chapter 1

W hen his father abandoned them, his mother

took an insurance man to church with her
one Sunday and then wooed him with spare ribs in
a picnic basket. They tied the ten-month-old boy in
his baby seat, took him into the park by the lake, and
set him on a blanket in the grass. His mother spread
out the tablecloth on the ground beside him and set
out the plates and silverware. Then she and her new
boyfriend, Rob Cheney, went down to the lake to look
for rocks. At least, when she told her son later what
had happened, that was what she said they were
doing—looking for rocks.
They combed the edge of the water and, by mistake,
stepped into a swamp. Surprised, standing knee-deep
in the slough, his mother was shocked to hear the
words coming out of Rob’s mouth. While he angrily
sucked his boots out of the ooze, she stood helplessly
apologizing over and over again. Grabbing the cat-
tails, slogging through the muck, she reached for Rob’s
hand and barely pulled herself loose. Rob grumbled all
the way back, though she tried to appease him with
descriptions of her home-cooked picnic dinner in the
carryall.
But there was more than culinary arts that greeted
them on the grass. On their return they found the
small son buried by a confusion of wings—a blur
of dark birds. A flock of crows? Terror-stricken, the
mother ripped the picnic tablecloth out from under the
dinner to beat off the birds. The spoons and forks and
knives flew up from the ground and pelted the child
until he was bruised.

Irreantum 57 Winter 2003/Spring 2004

 If her son were to believe her, it might explain why
he so often dreamed of birds.
After his mother married the insurance salesman,
they moved in and out of small towns all over the
West. When he could find a patch of grass, the boy
spent his best hours lying on his back, staring at the
clouds, watching the birds float overhead. It seemed
they were writing messages of some kind or another in
the sky as they soared and dipped. As the words flew in
and out of the birds’ wings, they finally struck him as
profound, words he must write, holding the pen above
a spiral notebook, grinding his teeth as he carved every
word into the paper. And he wasn’t going to spare the
color of the words, which was dark.
When the baby girls were born, he put fingers in
his ears to shut out the noise. As the family traveled
across the hot desert, he wore earphones with his small
radio and sat huddled by the window in the backseat
of the car. Without thinking, he tapped the rhythms
on the ashtray with his fingers. Rob yelled, “Stop that
clicking, or I’ll rip that thing off your head.” But the
sound of the drum in the earphones seemed to be so
addictive that he could not remember to keep still. Tap
tap tap, until Rob reached into the backseat, yanked
the headpiece off the boy’s ears, and dragged it forward
over his mother’s hair. As it tangled there, the angry
stepfather pulled and pulled at it until there were tears
in Katherine Cheney’s eyes. “Blast that kid! I’m going
to kill him!” he yelled. After yanking out frazzled
clumps of red hair, he tore the earphones apart and
threw them into the road. The boy saw the rest of his
mother’s hair standing in snarled loops on her head.
When they lived in Snowflake, Arizona, he often
heard her crying in the middle of the night, sob-
bing. For a long time she had been telling Rob that
she wanted something better. She begged for a more
permanent home—even if it was a shack. Finally, he
bought a Fleetwood mobile home, but it wasn’t “per-
manent.” It was the beginning of a string of neighbor-
hoods in mobile home parks from Southern California
throughout New Mexico and Arizona.
There was the accident on the road—Rob flying
through the air toward him, covering him up like
black wings. But it was in the small third bedroom of
the mobile home that one night, half awake, the boy
felt a dark weight looming over his sleep. The room
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
began to turn as if it was alive and he was attached
to it. He thought the lights through the windows were
the eyes of hawks who were ready to fall on him with
big beaks and eat his flesh.
On Sundays in Anaheim his mother put a roast
beef in the little kitchen oven. She slathered it with
tomato sauce and Lipton’s onion soup. She took all the
children to church while Rob slept off his hangovers.
When they came back from Sunday School, his step-
father was sitting at the table with a fork and a sharp
knife in his hand, cutting up the last of the roast.
Katherine Cheney backed up against the refrigera-
tor, alarmed. “That was for all of us.” The boy could
hear her gasping for breath.
“Who paid for it?” Rob bellowed.
The boy, in the midst of all this pain, was nine—
with the illusion that he was old enough to stand for
something. He struck out and kicked his stepfather in
the shins. “Don’t yell at my mother!”
Rob screamed with his mouth full, “Are you trying
to take the food out of my mouth?” He opened up
wide, pulled the chewed roast beef out of his teeth,
and slapped it on the boy’s face. He grimaced, pushing
it into the boy’s eyes and nose with the flat of his cal-
loused palm.
Not much later, when they lived in Irvine, the boy
woke to feel a heavy weight fall on his back, a giant
beak under massive wings, bearing down on him,
hurting him, bearing down in terrible pain.
Chapter 2
W es Clayton knows this feeling. He’s had
it before. As though something’s about
to happen. Like walking across a field, coming
unaware upon a meadowlark’s nest, and fighting
an explosion of wings. He lurched awake from his
courtroom dreams, from dreams of gunfire, and
from the dreams of the automobile accident. The
sensation was much like others he had experienced
when something momentous was imminent.
The nagging suspicions—almost as intrusive
as the ring of an alarm—had plagued him all his
life. He turned over in the fog of sleep and tried
to climb out of the dreams he could see as clearly
as though on film—the moment his hands felt the
58 Irreantum
black boy’s fingers press the trigger, or the moment
the truck swung out across the middle of the road.
The first time he felt forewarned was when he
was finally old enough to hunt with his brother
Alan and his friends. It was on the Clayton family
visit—both parents, two sons, three daughters—to
their grandfather in Brigham City. It was hunting
season. At first he had wanted to be included. He
had waited for this time ever since he could remem-
ber. Yet he could not understand why he felt so
unsettled. After he had helped his grandfather milk
the cows very early in the morning, he had curled
down beside the hay and pulled it over his head.
His grandfather leaned over him in the shadows.
“Wake up, Wes. Your brother and his friends are
waiting for you,” he said. And he had added,
“Little Boy Blue.”
But Wes wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was
twelve now. And it was time to go . . . “Be sure
that is what you want to do,” his grandfather said.
It was his decision. Be wise, his grandfather had
always told him. If you’re clean as a whistle, then lis-
ten. The winds will resonate in you. It was Grandpa’s
way of saying that if you lived right, you would
hear a whisper.
He had waited all his life to hunt. Every fall the
men fetched a deer for the freezer. Of course he had
decided to go. Yet, when the trek began, it seemed
there was some excitement about it that had slipped
away. He felt a nagging premonition that it wouldn’t
be what he expected it to be. And it wasn’t. The
boys had not been able to find any deer.
Robbed of their purpose, and hungry for sport,
Alan and his friends had begun shooting anything
that was alive. Wes tried to ignore the fact that his
hands were trembling. When he saw a rabbit by a
sagebrush in the distance, the others yelled at him,
“There’s one! Get it, Wesley! Get it!” He braced
himself. When the gun went off against his shoul-
der, it kicked him back. He watched the rabbit arc
and scream as it flew into the air.
“You did it!” the friends yelled. “You did it!”
He never forgot the rabbit pinned against the
hot breeze by his bullet. He’d started to smile. It
was the first time he had ever killed something. It
was fun. His heart jumped and pounded. He tried
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to forget that his hand was shaking. Alan stood over
him. “Was that the first time for you, Wes?”
Wes walked to the rabbit and stood over it. It
was struggling, still alive, its glassy black eyes reflect-
ing the sun. Someone said, “Shoot it dead.” Wes
hefted the rifle and pointed it against the rabbit’s
head. When he pulled the trigger, his whole body
leaped again at the crack. The rabbit went limp.
Wes felt something distasteful in his throat. One of
Alan’s friends asked, “Do you want the pelt?” There
was blood in the fur. His throat was still filled with
bitterness. He did not want to touch it. They left
it. He saw the rifle against the rabbit’s head in his
mind. He tried to forget about it when the others
bragged to his grandfather. “The first shot! He put
that rabbit down on the first shot,” Rick told him.
But his grandfather had looked away. When the
others were gone, Grandpa had been quiet with
Wes, but firm. “Were you listening to what I have
always said about just . . . killing?”
W hen he heard forewarnings after that, he lis-
tened. He heard them a year later when his
brother Alan died of leukemia. He had poured out
his frustration in tears. Remembering this feeling,
even after his marriage to Sarah, he had felt other
tragedies coming—when both of his parents had
been killed on the freeway, and when he had shot
the black boy at the Circle K . . .
The court had gone over and over the details of
the robbery at the Circle K. He had grabbed the
gun from the black boy’s hand with the boy’s fin-
gers closing in on the trigger. The shot had grazed
Wes’s collarbone. And the next shot had in some
way gone through the kid’s jaw and through his
brain. Hurting from the wound in his shoulder, he
had sat in a courtroom for hours with people who
should probably have been out working, doing
something productive for society, but were instead
arguing about whether he should go to prison for
killing a black boy. He pled guilty. Yes, of course his
fingerprints were on the gun. But it was the boy’s
gun. It seemed to make no difference until the
court finally put together some kind of watered-
down decision to let him go. After they consented
to transfer him out of L.A. to the tranquility of
59 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Orange County, he nevertheless felt profoundly
insecure. Once he had been eager to see action, but
the experience in the courtroom subdued him. He
went over the scene in his mind a thousand times.
He saw the black boy holding up the man behind
the counter in the convenience store, his thin fin-
gers shaking against the trigger, and Wes—prob-
ably overconfident, feeling his young and heady
self—had opted for intimidation. He had walked
forward slowly, trying to stare the boy down. “Put
down the gun.”
“I’ll shoot,” the boy had said, taking his cue from
some old cowboy movies, or perhaps getting his
nerve from video games. “I’ll shoot,” he repeated.
Wes remembered how the boy looked then—as
though he were somewhere on the edge of fifteen
years old. Praying, Wes had walked closer, closer.
Finally he was close enough to tip the gun upward
so that the boy’s bullet had grazed his shoulder. But
the boy had a grip of iron. In trying to release the
gun from him, Wes had sprung the robber’s arm
back somehow and the shot had gone through the
boy’s jaw and brain, the blood seeping across the floor
of the store, the proprietor mad with fear.
The solution to the disturbing hunt had been
never to go hunting again. But after the boy’s death,
what should be his course of action then? Should
he change careers? He asked himself over and over
again why he had troubled himself to finish tough
training, to walk into danger daily, to say good-bye
to Sarah every day without knowing if he would
see her or Richie again, when it was possible his job
would always have to be defended on a bench? He
was kidding himself to believe he contributed some-
thing to the L.A.P.D. The other officers slurred him,
even though it was usually in good humor: “Killer
Boy,” “Black Bomber,” “Mormon Monster.”
He tentatively made the decision to keep at the
“career from hell” for at least a while longer, when
the day on the beach happened. He had felt the
most powerful wind of direction on that critical
morning that had changed his life forever—a morn-
ing of static. Of strange crosswinds. It had been
the noise that had crackled through to him that
morning at Doheny Beach that had brought him
to Brigham City.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
He had slowed the patrol car to tune out the
harsh sound. It had been three o’clock in the morn-
ing. Doheny Beach lay empty. Only an occasional
lighted window winked through the trees looming
above the high tier of homes along the cliff. The
smog was standing like soup under the lamps in the
street. The buildings in the park looked hooded,
like sleeping birds waiting for the sun. In the quiet,
Wes could hear only monotone—the buzz of planes
high over the coastline, the sound of his motor, the
tires humming against the road.
For several nights there had been relative peace
on the beat—even emptiness. For weeks nothing had
happened. That was the way he liked it, though on
this morning he had felt the air was weighted with
unusual pressure, like humidity or electricity. And
he felt some connection—as though something
unusual would happen. He felt the same wavering
sense of fear that he was capable of killing not only
a rabbit but also the black boy at the Circle K.
As he drove that quiet beat that early morning,
the crackle of the static on his radio began to nag
at him again. He could hear a voice through the
muddle, though he was unsure who it might be.
“Two seventeen. Two seventeen. Come in,” he
tried.
He believed it was a man’s voice. When he had
left the precinct, Peg had been the only one in the
office. But it sounded like a male voice. The words
sounded like “Pendleton Park.”
Pendleton Mobile Home Park. He tightened his
fingers on the dispatch.
S ometimes he believed he slept while driving.
The long dead nights had a way of hypnotizing
him into a semiconscious blur. It was in these early
morning hours, cruising Laguna Niguel, Laguna
Beach, Dana Point, that he sometimes felt he lost
consciousness. After the ordeal in L.A. he had
hoped there would be pleasant periods of profound
quiet. But the quiet seemed to make the interrup-
tions more troubling than ever.
Pendleton Park. At the semaphores on the bou-
levard, tapping the steering wheel and gazing at
the blue haze over the hills, he wondered why he
thought he had been called to law enforcement as
60 Irreantum
though it were some kind of mission. And why he
had ever chosen to begin his career in the hotbed of
California. For some reason, tonight he was men-
tally away, still suffering through the endless court-
room ordeal, or thinking about his parents’ accident,
or his grandfather’s farm in Brigham City, Utah.
Suddenly the male voice broke through. It had
to be Ray. “Benny Boy must be out of the pen,” the
voice droned.
Benny Boy. When Wes first arrived in Orange
County, they had just put a man in jail for rape—
an eighteen-year-old electrical engineering student
by the name of Ben Anderson. The story was that
Anderson had fallen for some redheaded movie
siren with a bit part in a two-bit film. The expected
happened—she had snubbed him. But instead of
swallowing tears, he had chosen to rape another
redheaded girl, one who happened to be the district
attorney’s daughter Jill. It was blown up in the local
newspapers. The boy got five years. The precinct
hadn’t told Wes much about the case except that
the boy lived with his Mormon mother and step-
father in Pendleton Park, and the stepfather had a
heavy arm.
Pendleton Park. The sound of the words nettled
him. Ray’s voice dragged him from thoughts of
Brigham City and the California courtroom to the
college student Ben Anderson and his stepfather
Rob Cheney at Pendleton Park. The images clashed
in his mind. He shook his head. It was strange. He
had heard of the young man, but had never seen
him. That was four years ago. The kid who had
raped the daughter of the district attorney must
have been paroled early for good behavior. Perhaps
jail had cured him. Wes wondered if the boy had
thought about what he had done. After all, he had
a strict upbringing. The officers in the precinct
had mentioned it in the bullpen—making fun of
his Mormon mother. “She took him to church in
a white shirt and tie.” At the time, Wes—who was
also a Mormon, and had attended the Mormon
church in a white shirt and tie—had kept his
mouth shut. The mother, Mrs. Katherine Cheney,
must have herded her kids into Primary while she
went to Relief Society. She must have gathered
them around her for family home evening.
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When he heard the words over the wire, “Pend-
leton Park,” he tried to shut down his thoughts
about the past—except for the vivid memory of
curling up in his grandfather’s haystack in Brigham
City. He had pulled the hay over himself to keep
warm.
“Is there somebody else trying to get through?”
he asked Ray, his breath hot on his fingers.
“Somebody else?” Ray sounded punch drunk.
“Earlier I thought I heard another voice.”
“Not that I know of. Get your butt over to
Pendleton Park. Sounds like it’s that Cheney again.
Probably beating his stepkid into a bloody pulp.”
Wes turned at the light and sped toward the
mobile home court. He could have sworn someone
else had been trying to send an alert over the wire.
While he drove, he was still grasping his memories
of Brigham City as though the town would materi-
alize before his eyes. He could see his grandfather’s
gray mustache closing in as he hid his face in the
haystack. “Wake up, little Wes. Wake up, boy,” his
grandfather had said. “Little Boy Blue.”
He was quiet. He didn’t change directions, as
though he were driving away from Pendleton Park.
But the moon seemed to bolt down out of the sky
like a searchlight unwilling to leave him alone.
“Two seventeen.” The voice was loud and clear
this time. “Over.”
“This is two seventeen. Come in.” Wes slowed
down. The technology had been giving them
trouble. Sometimes it worked if he parked.
“Ray here. You still on? Didn’t hear nothin’ from
you. You anywhere near Pendleton Park?”
“I got it,” Wes managed. “I’m on.” He felt that
subtle pain of helplessness grip him. Pendleton Park
was the only mobile home park in Orange County
he had always tried to pass with a heavy foot on
the pedal, hoping that some drunk wouldn’t run
out into the road and stop him. Now the premoni-
tion seemed more intense than ever. He thought
he could feel trouble spread like a spinal tap up his
back. “I’m there. Over.”
“You remember the address number?”
Wes waited. He was not sure.
“It’s 1207. Over.”
“Gotcha.”
61 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “She’s a Mormon. Maybe you can talk Mormon
to her!” Ray was laughing.
Wes tried to ignore the slur. He’d heard it many
times before. He put the radio back in its cradle,
though behind Ray’s voice he thought he could
still hear the earlier static that had seemed to have a
higher whine to it, as though it hit a taut wire. But
nothing of that call had come through. He tried to
ignore it.
Near the road that led to Pendleton Park, Wes
could suddenly hear the strident voices coming
from one of the trailers in the court—a lot of
screaming. And when he advanced toward 1207,
he could see in the dull light that the source of the
noise was the patio in the back. A young man was
swinging a baseball bat against the wrought iron.
The clanging iron wasn’t the only thing he was
hitting. Wes winced to hear the thud against what
sounded like the body of a man.
“Get out of my life! Leave me alone!” the young
man’s voice was screaming.
When Wes approached in the dark, the startled
face of the young man glanced toward him briefly.
Through locks of unkempt hair, the eyes registered
terror. And in a swift motion—as though he had
done it a thousand times before—he jumped over
the back fence and ran. Wes saw that the father
was lying inert on the patio. The mother stood in
the window. The doors were closed. But Wes could
hear her sobbing. He went to the father on the
ground. He was still breathing, though he seemed
to be in shock. But Wes could not see that any
bones had been broken.
There was no time to waste. Quickly, he strode
across the patio and pulled a chair to the fence.
As he leaped over, he fell into a bramble of dry
milkweed. Getting his footing was not as easy as it
had been ten years ago, when he was twenty-three.
As he ran in the direction of the young man, the
lights from the oncoming traffic dazzled him. He
stumbled. Ahead of him almost half a mile, he saw
a silhouette running along the edge of a bank of
eucalyptus trees. If that was Ben Anderson, he was
too far behind to catch up. Wes had never really
had a good look at him. He wouldn’t recognize
him on the street. His heart was pounding. And
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
aching. He guessed it probably was the son—Ben
Anderson, a boy who had once attended church in
a white shirt and tie and whose stepfather had beat
him unmercifully for who knows what. And the
precinct had suspected other kinds of abuse when
the boy was small. Now the boy had grown large
enough to fight back.
“Wes, it’s all right.
You are trying to
save the whole world
in one lifetime.”
Wes felt physical pain. Because he had seen mul-
tiple abuses, he had made a pact with himself that
he would be extra careful raising his son. Richie
was four. Wes had been there for his first steps, the
fierce grip of his little fingers on the spoon. But in
the intensity of his patrol in L.A., he had missed
many moments of Richie’s growing up. And now
no other child had come along. He and Sarah had
prayed for another child, but the prayers seemed to
have fallen on deaf ears. He wondered if it could
have been stress. There were other ways to earn a
living. The world had seemed to become one huge
proliferation of pornography and drugs. Sarah had
questioned his occupation, too. “Wes, it’s all right.
You are trying to save the whole world in one life-
time. Can’t you be satisfied saving one woman and
a small boy?”
When he told her he was going to be reassigned
to the night shift in Orange County, she had smiled.
“Of course I will miss you in the night. But if there
is peace . . .” Now, when he thought of how he used
to lie in her arms, and could not lie in her arms
anymore, he wanted to withdraw. Just as he had
wanted to snuggle close to the haystack and pull
the hay over his body—to hide himself from the
world.
Finally back at Pendleton Park that night, Wes
waited on the small porch of the Fleetwood mobile
62 Irreantum
home for a long time until Katherine Cheney opened
the door. Haggard and drawn, she clutched an old
red robe in her chafed fingers. “Hello, Brother Clay-
ton. I’m sorry.”
“Sister . . . Cheney,” he said. She had been an
attractive woman once. Now she looked dried up
like an old apple in the grass.
“I appreciate your coming. I don’t know what
you can do.”
Inside the room, past Mrs. Cheney, Wes could
see the stepfather lying on the couch, his swollen
hands falling to the carpet. The television set was
on. Katherine Cheney was obviously trying to stand
between the officer and his view of her husband,
who looked not only wounded but very drunk.
Her eyes were wary, fastened on Wes’s roving gaze.
“We’ll be all right. He’s okay. They fought over
who was going to use the car tonight.” She glanced
uneasily back toward the lump of humanity, his
body rising and falling with uneven breath.
Wes paused for a moment, feeling his heart slump
with pity. Her cheeks seemed to sag as though
soaked by too many tears. “Do you know where
your son might be?” he asked.
She shook her head slowly. “Probably his girl-
friend.” But she was quick to add, “I don’t know
where she lives.” Her gaze seemed open, as though,
because she had suffered so much, there was noth-
ing left to give—including information. “We knew
her in Snowflake, Arizona.”
Wes paused. He tried to test the limits of his
legal privilege. “I . . . I’m also . . . . You’re a member
. . .” He stumbled. “Do you need your bishop to
come?”
The woman’s eyes flickered, as though he had
suddenly made an unexpected connection. But the
message in her face wouldn’t transfer to speech. Her
expression seemed to say yes, she would probably
love to see her bishop—if she thought he could
solve anything. However, Wes sensed that she had
tried opening up to her bishop before, and there
seemed to be no chance in the world that the man
who led the flock of members in the ward could
take the time required for her needs as well as the
needs of every other impoverished, tragically bur-
dened family whose dynamics had been disrupted
Irreantum
by laziness, lack of commitment—and evil. “No,
Brother Clayton. I appreciate your help. I’ve found
it’s just best to solve my own problems. Thank you
so much.” Now she stood stone still as though she
had walked out of the conversation.
“I can look for him and keep in touch with you.
He can’t be far.”
“That would be nice,” she said from stone-col-
ored lips.
When Wes left, she closed the door without
looking at his face—her eyes riveted on his gun.
Pulling the patrol car out of Pendleton Park, he
again felt the curious foreboding. He thought he
sensed some live, dark object thrashing against one
of the side windows. Some huge bird, or a bat, had
hit the side of his car and—batting its wings—had
flown into the sky.
Wes posted a search on the dispatch, though none
of the officers on duty seemed able to pin down the
young man who had run away. In his drive along the
beach for the next twenty minutes, he berated his
own ineffectiveness. His heart sank. So many prob-
lems. He would have liked to close his eyes. Broken
families with uncaring fathers or mothers, the will-
ingness of so many young people to abandon any
sense of discipline for the immediate fix of alcohol
and drugs, their willingness in the name of “free-
dom” to release their emotional and physical sexual
urges toward anyone available—even children.
“Two seventeen.” Again the static on the radio.
“This is two seventeen. Come in,” he tried again.
Though he could barely hear the voice on the
other end, he immediately recognized Peg. “Four
ten. Two seventeen. Over. Can you take a call from
Salt Lake City? Your sister.”
All evening in the soupy smog, hearing the unusual
static, feeling the forceful pull of the moon, he had
known there was a call for him, and now it was
as though he knew it would be Peg this time. Peg
was his best ally in the office. Probably because she
belonged to the church and had relatives all over Utah,
including Brigham City. The words came through,
though he couldn’t hear her voice very well.
“I’m on patrol. Can you take a message?”
“Should I tell her to wait until you get in?”
“What is it? Can’t you tell me what it is?”
63 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “Someone—” Peg was cut off by interference. In
the end, he could catch only a few of her words:
“—something. You and something about Grandpa’s
house in Brigham City. Get here ASAP.”
Brigham City. He paused, still trying to get
through, but the connection had been difficult
from the beginning. He clutched the mouthpiece
of the radio in his hand. He felt the pieces of the
message come together. He wondered why tonight,
among all the images he had been seeing in his
mind, he had so clearly imagined his grandfather.
And he knew as instantly as though he had heard
the words in his ears that his grandfather had
passed away.
In the dark morning, the lights in the station
burned like fire. Every move he made seemed to
stamp itself on his consciousness. Climbing out of
the car, he could hear the leather of his boots on
the asphalt, and he thought, What am I doing here
when my grandfather has passed away? He could
remember every physical feature of the man who
had said, “Be wise.” He had taught him how to
bale hay, throw it on top of the wagon with the
pitchfork. He saw his grandfather in the field coax-
ing the horses with carrots. He saw his grandfather’s
lean frame adjusting the rifles against his backpack
when he sent his grandsons and their friends on the
deer hunt.
When he drove into the precinct, he could see
Peg’s dark curly head through the brightly lit win-
dows. She was sitting on top of one of the desks.
She held the desk phone against her ear. Walking
briskly into the foyer of the station, he could see
through the front windows that Ray was still at the
dispatch board, his curly brown head bobbing up
and down. When he opened the front doors, Peg
saw him, put the phone down on the desk, and
rushed through the office door into the foyer.
“It’s your sister Sheryl,” she said. “Hurry. She’s
called me three times now, and I’ve had to put
Ed on hold. He’s driving me crazy. It’s your grand-
father. He passed away just an hour ago. I think
you inherited something. You’re about to strike it
rich, and you just dawdle. Whatever it is, you can
give it to me.”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Wes thought his hand shook when he took the
receiver. “Sheryl.”
Sheryl’s voice was unsteady. “Thank heaven I’ve
reached you.” Her thin string of words over the
wire barely came through. “Grandpa is gone.” There
was a pause, a tremor.
For a moment Wes couldn’t say anything.
“He’s left you the house. Since Alan died . . .”
she hesitated, “you’re the only male grandchild. You
probably expected it.”
“No,” Wes said. He thought his heart stopped
beating. “No, I didn’t.” He couldn’t bring himself
to say more.
The funeral was to be Saturday, Sheryl said, and
she wished he and Sarah and Richie could make it.
“Of course,” Wes said.
“We’ll talk then.”
When he put the phone back in its cradle, Peg
stared at him. “So?” she asked him.
“He deeded the house in Brigham City over to
me before he died.”
Peg backed away and sat in the chair at her desk.
“Brigham City” she said, as though it were the name
of a spot on the moon.
For a moment there was silence. Wes’s thoughts
raced.
“Well, are you going to take a day off to go to
the funeral? And sell the house? I guess we can
cover for you.” She glanced over at Ray, still push-
ing wires at the radio. Then, in the silence, her
tone changed. “You’re not thinking of living in the
middle of prehistoric Utah?”
Sitting against her desk, Wes felt the weight of
everything that had happened tonight. And the
memories of his grandfather hurt him. He would
never see his grandfather’s smile again. Or hear him
whistling in the corral. He couldn’t fight tears.
“I’m so sorry, Wes,” Peg was saying. “I’m sorry
that your grandfather is gone.”
Wes knew she sensed his emotion. “He lived a
good life,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry, Wes. But I’ve got to get back. Ed was
angry that I would spend the night here again. He’s
livid, insisting I start to work days.” Wes had thought
that Ed didn’t deserve Peg. The cocky boyfriend
64 Irreantum
often told Peg what to do, and he hadn’t even pro-
posed yet. “You’re so lucky,” Peg continued to Wes.
“Sarah rolls with all the punches. She goes your
way always! Except maybe to leave California, sell
her new house and go to Brigham City, Utah.”
Peg fished around in the drawer of the desk for
her purse. “I told you once my mother has cousins
who live in Brigham City. The Mormons are every-
where.” She laughed. “I can remember the little red-
heads running around. Maybe I’ll buy your house
in Brigham City. Maybe I wouldn’t mind going to
a place where there’s no crime! I’m so sick of drugs
all over the place, men shooting themselves in the
legs with heroin, girls throwing themselves at pimps
for a hole to sleep in!” Peg had always been graphic.
“If you don’t want your house in Utah, maybe I’ll
buy it.”
Wes forced himself to grin. “Bury yourself in a
hick town in Utah? Peg, you’re trying to make me
laugh. Ed would never stand for it.”
“Phooey on Ed.” Peg grinned, her eyes peering
from beneath her tight dark curls. Lately she had
been impatient with Ed, who seemed to have snubbed
his nose at the missionary lessons. She looked at
Wes to find out if he was surprised. “You don’t
believe me, do you?” she added. “I’d get away from
here if there were any way I could. I’m tired of Ed
sidestepping the church, sidestepping marriage. I
might hide in your suitcase.”
Wes smiled. “You’re free as the breeze, Peg. I’m
not. You’re right. Sarah would never leave the new
house.” He was remembering that only last week
Sarah had finished painting Richie’s room in their
Irvine home. Pausing with the paintbrush in her
hand, she had said, “This is it, Wes. We did right
buying here. We can stay for a long time.”
“But on the other hand, she told me she doesn’t
like to drive in California,” Peg snickered.
Wes felt numb. It was true. He should let Sarah
speak for herself. He knew she hated the traffic in
California. But he couldn’t think about much of
anything at the moment but his grandfather. All of
the rest would come later.
“Well, I think I did the job I was supposed to
do tonight.” Peg interrupted his thoughts. “I called
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Ray to come in. I couldn’t stay because Ed insisted
. . . he had some financial complaints he wanted
to unravel.” Peg began putting things away, zip-
ping and unzipping her purse, finding her keys.
“I told him I’d help him this morning before he
takes something or other to the title company.”
Ready now, she paused. “Wes, I’m sorry about your
grandfather. Go to the funeral, enjoy the weekend.
Let me know what happens. I’m out of here.”
Wes held the door for her as she walked out. He
felt he had some things left to do at his desk, though
he believed he would leave earlier than usual.
“If you decide to sell the house in Brigham City,
get a picture of the place, and I might be interested
in buying it from you.”
Wes nodded his head. “Sure,” he said sarcasti-
cally.
“I’m serious,” Peg said. “You don’t believe me, do
you?”
No, he didn’t. When the door slammed, and he
heard Peg drive off into the night, he sat at his desk
with his back to Ray and the radio, and he lowered
his head to his hands. His grandfather was an old
man of eighty-nine years, stooped with arthritis,
his hands gnarled and crippled. It was a miracle
how clearly his face seemed to come to him in this
moment—the creases around the old blue eyes, the
firm chin, and the skin blemishes so memorable
he could see each of them. And he could see the
expression on his grandfather’s face. It was soft,
filled with warmth and with a smile he would never
forget. “Wake up, Wes,” he had said to him earlier
in the evening. “Wake up, boy.” And Wes was lis-
tening now.
The author of several novels, Marilyn Brown has
served as president of the AML.
65 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 S t o r y
Autobahn
By Neil LaBute
Author’s note: This story is from a collection of short
pieces that take place in automobiles. The umbrella
title is Four on the Floor.
T he headlights poke through the fog, picking
out the ragged yellow line up ahead as it loops
back and forth through various turns. The man
keeps his eyes on the road; he tries the high beams,
but that only makes it worse. He knew that it
would, but he gives it a go anyway. Almost imme-
diately he returns to the standard beams and hunches
forward, continuing his vigilance. The woman
stares out through the windshield as well, but less
worried about the conditions than her husband.
She can afford it—she’s not driving. After a moment,
she begins talking again. Not to him, exactly, but
loud enough for him to hear. Certainly with enough
volume for that.
“. . . We just keep doing lousy things, I guess.
That’s what it is. All this lousy stuff that seems to
finally catch up with us. Right? I dunno . . . it’s
hard not to feel that sometimes, this sense of, you
know, regret. Well, maybe not that, maybe not real
regret, like we were these Nazi war guards or what-
ever, hiding out in Nova Scotia and hoping that
nobody figured out it was us when they show one
of those films on the History Channel . . . but you
see what I’m saying, don’t you? ’Course. I’m sure
you feel it, too. I think it’s just the way it is these
days, the whole country is living with this now, a
kind of . . . well, whatever it is. A sickness. Yeah, a
sick sort of feeling in your gut that says, ‘Hey, hello
there, what’s going on? I got a real ache in here that
tells me we’re up to no good.’ Now, that’s just me
being sort of dramatic about it, but it’s like that. A
still, small voice of some kind. I took drama back
in school, did I ever mention that? Oh, yes. I was
quite the little actress . . . had the lead in several
productions and even sang a bit. Not much of a
dancer—I’ve always thought that was a difficult art,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
don’t you? Dancing—but I was known to carry a
tune and could shed a tear on cue. Almost literally,
on cue. That’s what they call it in the movies . . .
your cue. When it’s your turn to do something, and
I was able, whether by gift or just practice, I could
laugh or cry with the best of ‘em. The best of Teddy
Roosevelt Junior High, anyway. So, that’s why I
was doing that . . . acting out that bit just now.”
They travel on for a while in silence. The woman
glances over at the man, checking on him. Trying
to gauge his reaction. Only the constant blinking
of his lashes, captured by the milky light from the
dashboard, betrays that he is still awake. Watching
the road.
“Not that I think what we’ve done is so awful,
I mean, on paper. Down on paper you see that
people do this type of thing all the time . . . do it
and go on quite happily with their lives. Absolutely
true. I mean, it is ‘we,’ right? You felt the same way
about things, I know you did, we talked it through
and I think this was a very sensible decision on our
part. Almost a sacrifice, really, when you think about
it, because for the first few months it seemed like
we were all very happy. It felt that way to me, any-
how. As if we were a family and were going to be
that way for the rest of our days. Just like you’d see
on any channel of the TV. Like on those half-hour
comedy shows that they have out now. It felt just
like that . . . But you never know, do you? No, you
just never know what is going on inside the heart
of a person, you can’t really ever be sure. I mean,
you look at them, study them at the counter or in
the breakfast nook before they head off to school in
the morning, but you can’t really tell.”
She drifts for a moment, remembering. His head
starts to turn but stops midway through the ges-
ture. He reaches for a cigarette instead and, without
asking, fires it up. Flicks the paper match out the
slit of an open window.
“The first time he smiled at us, on that visit to
the agency, do you remember that? I know he was
sick, his nose all runny and everything, but it was
like baby Jesus beaming up at you . . . that’s what
it seemed like to me. Like I was staring down into
the manger or something . . . just brought him this
big carton of that stuff they were carrying, the Wise
66 Irreantum
Men—frankincense, I believe—and there he is,
looking up at me with his big blue eyes and letting
me know that this is the start of a glorious time.
That’s what it felt like to me. Now, I know, I know
he was older than that, a baby, but I’m saying what
it felt like. That was the feeling I got. And, anyway,
there aren’t any pictures around of the teenage Jesus,
so that’s all I have to go on. The baby. Well, plus,
the older ones, of course. The mature Christ. But
he was, wasn’t he? He was something almost nearly
like that, like the Child himself . . . he was beauti-
ful. Yes. I wonder if Christ really did have the blue
eyes . . . you know, like they depict him on those
shows? Hmm. I wonder.”
The woman glances over at her husband, but he
keeps his eyes focused on the business at hand, guid-
ing their car through the growing mist. He tosses
the butt of his Pall Mall out through the same
fissure as the match. She watches this action, even
turns her head to watch the filter as it catches on
the edge of the window before being swept away by
the breeze.
“. . . I know it’s hard, I know that. It is com-
pletely hard, and I can already feel the void that’s
there for me . . . for us. Plus, the money. I’m abso-
lutely aware of that part as well. But I don’t think
I could’ve taken another call from his counselor or
the police, you know? I really don’t think I could.
When people start to look at you in the store—and
I don’t care if it’s just Target or not—then it’s time
to do something. To step up and do what it takes
to feel right and safe and like a good citizen. Don’t
you think? Well, I do. Plus, this car is not made for
racing, isn’t that what you said? I heard you scream-
ing that at him last time, and I agree. This is not
some high-performance vehicle that a person can
just run up and down the access road like it was
one of those deals they’ve got in Germany. What’s
it called, with the open—oh, come on, you know
. . . the open speed limit? ‘Autobahn.’ That’s it, an
‘autobahn.’ Now, I don’t know what that means,
exactly, what it would translate to be in normal
English, but we are not living near one of those,
nor is he old enough to be out doing that. Taking
the car out of the garage—I mean, why don’t we
just call it what it is, it’s stealing, right? Plain and
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simple—and off joyriding around town. I don’t
care if he saw it in the movies or his friends put
him up to it, which I don’t doubt—that older Free-
man boy is just an absolute terror—but he can’t do
that. He had many chances to stop, we gave him,
well . . . nothing but chances, and he just couldn’t
stop. Couldn’t stop going in my purse or calling
us names or any of it, for that matter, not in the
end. Could he? No . . . it was just too much. Too,
too much, and that is not what we signed up for
as foster parents. I’m no police woman. I am not
Angie Dickenson with a cute haircut and a gun in
my bag . . . I’m a working adult, and I don’t have
time to do that. Be someone’s mom. No, I don’t
mean that, I was his mom, I am, but he just . . . you
know what it is? He was a pusher. He pushed us.
Us, and the limits, and anything else he could butt
up against. Who knows what his birth parents were
like—I have an idea, thank you very much—but he
was someone who would just keep on pushing until
there was no room . . . left in the room. I know
that seems wrong, using ‘room’ twice like that in
a sentence, but it’s what it was like. You know
what I’m saying. He left you no space. No room
in which to maneuver. Plus, the gun. I mean, my
God! Taking a handgun to school, even if it’s just to
show off to your classmates . . . that’s the end. The
complete end, and that is that. Even the agency
people told us that. I don’t know if you heard her,
that red-headed one who was in the back office, but
she said we did the right thing. She said—if you’ll
permit me the performance once again—‘You
two have done the right thing here. Absolutely
the right thing.’ Looked me dead in the eye as she
was issuing our final check and said that, so I felt
much better when I heard it. I mean, I felt it, could
feel it in my heart, but it’s always nice to have it
validated. Your instincts. And we can always bring
someone else into our home, that’s what she told
me. We’re a level three on the clearance chart, so
we’re already set up to do it again, if that’s what we
want. Maybe a girl this time . . . wouldn’t that be
nice? And younger, maybe. That way, if she was a
bit younger . . . we could make a greater impression
right up front, and then we wouldn’t find ourselves
in a spot like this.”
67 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 The woman steals another peek at her husband,
probably looking for some kind of validation for
these latest ponderings. Something. She doesn’t get
it, though, not yet. Rather, he adjusts the rearview
mirror, trying to ward off a pair of piercing head-
lights that suddenly appear on the horizon behind
him.
“. . . she also said, the redhead did, that this is
completely typical. The allegations that he’s mak-
ing. It’s a common trick that kids of his type do
when they’re brought back or have to be placed
in some other surroundings . . . it’s quite usual for
them to say that they’ve been abused in some way.
Sexually, or what have you. I think it’s sick, and
I’m very sorry that you’ve got to go through this,
honey, but she assured me that it happens all the
time and that nine times out of ten—actually she
said eight, eight times out of ten, but that’s a very
high number, too—it’ll often blow over. Charges
dropped, or the kid will say it didn’t really happen,
or that kind of deal. So, no worries. And you know
that I believe you, right? You have my complete
and utter support . . . I mean, why would you ever
lay a finger on the boy? Some young boy whom
we’ve taken in as our child, our son? I’m aware that
people do that, I’m not some naive housewife who
only watches soaps and cooks pot roast, that is not
me . . . I read the paper and see the news, and I
know it happens, of course it happens, but please.
How could he do that? Tell the officer that ‘things’
of that nature had transpired? It just frightens me,
it really does. That he could have been under our
roof, eating off of our dinnerware, and harboring
a soul like that one. You just never know, do you?
No. Never . . .”
A truck zips past and disappears into the murk,
causing the car to shudder and swerve toward the
shoulder. The man grips the wheel and regains
control, cursing quietly to himself. Afterward, the
woman places a hand on the man’s knee and gently
toys with the fabric of his Dockers slacks. The man
looks over at her for a moment, only turning away
when she smiles up at him. She removes her hand
slowly from his thigh, in stages.
“Well, it doesn’t matter . . . it’ll go away, and
then we’ll be right back where we were. All fine and
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
good. Fine and good because we are that ourselves
. . . fine and good people who enjoy a place in the
community. We reached out to someone, a young
someone who needed us, and I have no shame in
that. I feel nothing but pride and want to do it
again. Do you? Sweetheart? Don’t you sense that
we should do it again and let everyone know that
this boy was a blip on the radar, a kind of—some
sort of bad apple in the barrel, and we are not the
problem. I do. That is exactly how this incident
makes me feel, and I have always been one to just
jump back on the horse and ride. You know I am.
. . . I even played Joan of Arc once, yes, I did, in
a school play. Back in my class like I was telling
you about. It’s true. I carried this big papier-mâché
horse around my shoulders on straps and had this
cardboard armor on—I even had my mother cut all
my hair shorter, that’s how excited I was—and we
told the story of that young French girl who became
a hero and martyr for her people. I have a photo of
it someplace, a snapshot that my uncle took of me
. . . he was always taking pictures of me. My moth-
er’s brother. Anyhow, that is what we need to do.
We have to get back on up and ride . . .”
The man nods without taking his eyes off the
interstate. There is construction up ahead, and he
begins the process of slowing, pumping his brakes
to let the cars behind him know what’s up. The
woman spots the nod and runs with it, happy to
have some reaction from her man.
“That’s the spirit . . . I realize that you were fond
of him. Tried to make a life for that child and give
him things. Show him how it all worked, being a
man. And I in no way hold the gun thing over you,
either. Feel that it was your fault for having that
pistol in the house—we’ve already talked about
that. It’s a very good thing, it just might protect us
one day. I agree. So, no. I think we were both . . .
selfless and caring and perfectly in the right to do
what we did. Some time back in a boy’s home is
exactly what he needs right now. Is crying out for,
really. He was. Was screaming it out, and we just
couldn’t even see the signs. That’s how much we
loved him. Loved having him with us. Maybe if he
hadn’t been crying it out at eighty miles an hour
in our Cabriolet, we might’ve heard him a little
68 Irreantum
better! Right? I think so. It’s funny that . . . I read in
a magazine somewhere, one of my many magazines
I have—I know, I know, too many—I saw a break-
down of our lives, one of those pie-shaped thingies
that takes time and divides it up into sections, and
it said that we as a people spend about an eighth
of our lives in cars. Yes. In automobiles. Isn’t that
remarkable? In our own cars, or the cars of others.
Loved ones, mostly. Hmmm . . . maybe that’s what
he was doing, do you think? Driving like a mad-
man around town because he loved us so much
. . . maybe so. Oh well. It was quite interesting,
anyway, when I read it. That article . . .”
The first lights of the city now, in the distance.
Like the fine glow of a sandy beach on a tropical
night, she thinks, having seen something like it on
the television. On one of the many travel shows that
she watches religiously.
“. . . and at least none of this has touched us.
Right? I mean, the core of that thing which is us.
What we have. That’s what I’m most thankful for.
That you and I, our union, is not sullied by the
experience . . . Am I using that word correctly? Sul-
lied? I believe so . . . we remain untouched by this
nonsense. Without sin, really. And that, in itself, is
a blessing . . . I do have some sense of having done
a bad thing, this kind of emotion that I mentioned
before. I’m not sure why. The ‘lousiness’ I spoke of,
but I’m sure that will pass. I’m sure. It just comes
with the territory . . . that woman, the one with the
red hair, she said that as well. ‘This sort of thing
comes with the territory.’ So, that’s a comfort. But
the fact that it has in no way chipped away at our,
you know—and I’m aware that you think I overdo
the word love, I know that, but—I’m just very
happy that it hasn’t.”
She reaches over again and touches him lightly
on the trousers. Rubs his leg a bit. Finally, he touches
his fingers to hers. Holds them there for a minute
before putting his hands firmly back at ten and
two. The first of six exit signs zips by overhead.
“Yes, I know . . . I love you, too. I do, I do. Like
Shakespeare said, ‘I love thee.’ Him or someone
like him wrote that, anyway. I do love thee. I don’t
know, I just don’t know . . . I’m sure he’ll be . . .
fine. At least for the night. He’s been there before,
Irreantum
God help ’em. He certainly knows the routine of
that place . . . and tomorrow we’ll call our lawyer,
check in with ol’ Mr. Thompson, and put an end
to all this other garbage in a heartbeat. One single
heartbeat and a forty-cent call . . . Indeed, we will.”
The blinker begins to flash as the man works
his way into the right lane. Slipping in between a
Chevette and an older Astro van. He drifts onto the
ramp and heads down toward the stoplight ahead.
There is silence for a moment as the woman waits
for the signal to change.
“. . . maybe the Germans have it right, after
all. Not about . . . I don’t mean in all ways, no, of
course not. I certainly don’t agree with their, you
know, politics . . . but the car thing, that autobahn
they’ve got there, maybe that’s not a bad idea, actu-
ally. Perhaps that’s the way it should be . . . all of
us, speeding by one another, too quick to stop, too
fast to care . . . just racing along, off on our little
journeys and no sense of how dangerous or careless
we’re being. Because we’d be safe, wouldn’t we? Of
course we would. Safe inside our bubbles of glass
and steel—I suppose it’s mostly plastic, now, but
you know what I mean—we’d be sheltered there,
in these cars as we moved along. All protected and
careening about. Yes. And maybe then we wouldn’t
hurt so much. Or feel so deeply when we’ve been
betrayed or hurt or lost. Yes. Yes, that might be just
the thing. The very thing we need. And to think
. . . it was right there in Germany, all these years
. . . and we never saw it before this. No, we didn’t.
Not even once . . .”
A green arrow flashes on, and the car lurches
forward, darting around a slow-moving Cadillac.
Disappearing into the haze of the underpass. The
red tail lights, like the flaming eyes of an ancient
monster, become smaller and smaller and smaller
still. And then they are gone, swallowed up by the
endless dark of an infinite night.
69 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 S t o r y
Sacred Places
By Angie Lofthouse
Editor’s note: This story received an honorable men-
tion in the 2003 IRREANTUM contest.
E ach day at dusk, a pillar of fire erupted over
the treetops and gyrated in the air above the
ruined temple that James and his team of archeolo-
gists called the Temple of the Flame. And every day,
Rachael stood outside and regarded the pillar the
way a jealous lover might a rival, and wondered if
James would come home for dinner.
Tonight, he climbed up over the hill, lit up in
the glow of the pillar, and Rachael rushed forward
to greet him. “I brought you something,” he told
her and dropped a smooth white stone into her
hand. As she watched, starbursts of color lit up the
stone like a miniature fireworks display. She laughed.
“It’s lovely.”
“The natives called them meditation stones. Marta
thinks the colors are caused by the same anomalies
that cause the mirage.”
“Oh,” Rachael said. Rachael closed her fist around
the stone, as if to shut out the sound of Marta’s
name. Beautiful, brilliant Marta.
“I think we’ve hit the inner sanctum now.” James
clapped his hands together. “We found hundreds of
meditation stones in there.”
“Does it ever bother you? Poking around in some-
one else’s sacred places?”
“Not when the someone else is long gone.” He
swung his arm around her shoulders and kissed her
cheek. “And don’t worry. We treat everything in
there with the utmost respect.”
“Daddy!” Max came tumbling out of the prefab
dome that had become their home, and Rachael
took the opportunity to slip out from under James’s
arms.
“Hi there, bud.” James hoisted Max onto his
shoulders.
Inside, Rachael could hear Lessa stirring, waking
up from her afternoon nap. She patted James on
the back. “It’s nice to have you home.”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
“Actually,” James said, setting Max down and
looking apologetic, “I have to get back.”
“Oh.” She held up the stone. “So, this was just
to butter me up?”
James grinned that dimpled smile that made her
knees wobbly. “Maybe just a little. You know how it
is, Rach. We’ve found some exciting stuff down there
today. Nobody wants to quit now.” He shrugged.
“And I’m the director. I need to be there.”
Rachael sighed and pocketed the stone. “I know.”
She picked up Lessa, who had toddled outside.
“You can get a Quik-meal from the fridge.”
James ran his hand along Rachael’s smooth, dark
hair and kissed Lessa on top of the head. “I’ll be
home in a couple of hours, okay?”
“Okay.” She fought down a sigh.
“I love you guys.”
She stood with the children and watched him
disappear down the hill again in the fading light of
the pillar. Then she took the kids inside, fed them
dinner, read them stories, helped them say prayers,
and tucked them into bed.
James didn’t come home until nearly midnight.
E arly in the morning, before dawn, she and James
made love. Afterward, she leaned her head
against his chest and listened to his heart beating. He
ran his fingers through her hair. Almost she could
forgive him for coming in late. She traced designs
across his chest with her fingers and sighed.
James sat up straighter. “I’ve been thinking. You
should go visit the homesteaders.”
She lifted her head to look at him. “The polyga-
mists? Why?”
“Why not? You could use the company, and
there are plenty of kids for Max and Lessa to play
with.”
“I don’t think they want visitors.”
“Sure they do. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Don’t they keep to themselves?”
“They aren’t going to turn away their only neigh-
bors on the entire planet, are they?”
She sniffed. “Hard to believe that we of all people
would end up with pseudo-Mormon polygamists
in our backyard. I mean, isn’t there some other planet
they could have chosen?”
70 Irreantum
 “That’s not a very Christlike attitude. You may
not approve of their lifestyle, but you should still
be neighborly.”
“They make us look bad. I’ll bet half your team
thinks you’ve got another dozen wives socked away
in their settlement.”
He chuckled, a warm rumble through his chest.
“Oh, they do not.” His voice softened, grew seri-
ous. “You’re lonely, Rachael. I think you should go
visit. Make some friends.”
Rachael snuggled her head against his shoulder.
She didn’t say that she wouldn’t be lonely if James
put the same effort into his family as he did into his
dig. That she wouldn’t be lonely if the other arche-
ologists thought of her as an intelligent human
being instead of dismissing her just because she had
chosen to stay home and raise children. She didn’t
say any of that. She tried to surreptitiously wipe a
tear off her cheek.
“Well?” James said. “Will you go?”
She pushed herself away from him and yanked
on her pajamas. “I guess so.” She kept her eyes on
the floor. James grabbed her shoulders and turned
her around for a last, lingering kiss.
“I love you,” he said. He dressed and was gone.
Rachael lay back down and dozed until the kids
woke up. She thought about James and his temple,
how it pulled him away from her all the time. Even
when they made love, he wasn’t really there. He was
caught up in a pillar of fire, lost in some vanished
civilization. She had followed him here, had given
up home, family, and friends, because she didn’t
want to sacrifice her family to archeology. But she
feared they had been sacrificed just the same.
Brilliant bursts of color exploded in the medita-
tion stone on the nightstand. Rachael watched it
for a minute, then sat up and put it in a drawer.
S he didn’t visit anyone. What with the garden
and the laundry and the baking and Max’s les-
sons and Lessa’s inexhaustible well of energy, who
had time to pay social calls?
“When’s Daddy coming home?” Max asked her
over dinner.
“I don’t know,” Rachael said, more sharply than
she intended. Max’s face fell. Rachael shoveled in a
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bite of rice and pork chop. James should see it, that
look on his face. She closed her eyes, set down her
fork, and rumpled his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he’ll
be home any minute.”
Lessa squealed and dumped her milk across the
table. Rachael dropped her head into her hands as
the milk puddled around her elbows and dripped
onto her lap.
James showed up an hour after she tucked the
kids into bed. Rachael was at her makeshift desk
working on a sketch for her latest story. They were
nothing more than silly fairy tales, really. But Max
and Lessa loved them, and creating them took her
mind off the endless hours of solitude. At least, it
usually did.
She put down her pencil when James came in.
“Well, you finally decided to show up.”
“You won’t believe what we found today.”
Rachael clenched her teeth. He was exuberant
about his find. Either he didn’t notice she was angry,
or he didn’t care. She stood up in the middle of his
description of the “beautifully engraved altar.”
“I don’t care what you found today.”
James stopped with his mouth open. “What’s
wrong?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong? I haven’t seen
you since six o’clock this morning. Lessa doesn’t
even remember that you exist. I’m here all alone all
the time with the entire responsibility for the fam-
ily on my shoulders.”
“That’s why I suggested you go see the home-
steaders, so you wouldn’t be lonely.”
“That isn’t going to solve anything! We need
you, James.”
“I’m not exactly on vacation down at that temple,
you know. I’m responsible for this project. It’s
important.”
“Your family is important, too. At least we’re
supposed to be. Do you realize how much I gave
up, how much the kids gave up, to be here with
you? If you can’t give us any of your time, then why
did you even bring us?”
James’s face grew hard. “I’m beginning to won-
der. I’m really beginning to wonder.”
He turned and walked out the door. Rachael
choked back a sob. She picked up her pencil and
threw it after him and burst into tears.
71 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Sometime around two or three in the morning,
she realized he wasn’t coming back, and she won-
dered where he had gone. She thought of Marta,
and her insides went cold. He wouldn’t do that to
her. Would he?
She thought about praying, but the words soured
and turned to dust in her throat. She curled herself
around her pillow and fell into a bitter, unhappy
sleep.
T he day dawned gray and heavy, and Rachael
was in no mood for forgiving. Lessa crawled
into bed with her, all giggles and curls, and wrapped
her baby arms around Rachael’s neck. Rachael sat
up and kissed her chubby cheeks. “Baby doll, we’re
getting out of here.”
“Where are we going?” Max bounced onto the
bed.
“We’re going to make some new friends.”
“Yippee!” He jumped up and down, and Lessa
joined in, clapping her hands and shrieking. Rachael
got up and left them to it.
S
he packed a basket of fresh vegetables and a
couple of loaves of bread, and piled the kids
into the jeep. At the last minute, she went back
inside and took the meditation stone from the night-
stand drawer.
The polygamists had homesteaded a fertile little
valley about eighty kilometers from the dig. There
was no road, but the jeep was meant to handle all-
terrain travel.
Temporary domes like the Murrays’, only bigger,
dotted the settlement, but the men and boys were
already at work on more permanent homes. Rachael
parked the jeep and sat tapping her fingers on the
steering wheel. She shouldn’t have come. Was she
just supposed to walk up and knock on the nearest
door? She hadn’t brought enough vegetables for the
whole settlement. They were probably all busy any-
way. She was about to leave when a woman with
short blond hair came outside and waved cheer-
fully. Rachael waved back and got out of the jeep.
She scarcely had Max and Lessa unloaded before a
group of kids swept them into a noisy game.
The blond woman held out her hand. “Hello
there. I’m Priscilla Pullman.”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
“Rachael Murray. My husband’s a scientist over
at the dig.” She handed Priscilla Pullman the basket
of food.
“It’s nice to meet you, Rachael. Won’t you come
inside?” Rachael glanced toward her children, and
Priscilla took her by the arm. “They’ll be fine.”
Rachael followed her in. The main living area
was filled with a long wooden table and benches.
Boxes half unpacked lined the walls and counter-
tops. “You’ll have to forgive us. We haven’t quite
got settled in yet.”
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all.” She produced a knife out of a pile
on the counter and cut two thick slices of Rachael’s
bread. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you coffee. We don’t
drink it.”
Rachael sat down at the table and accepted the
bread. “It’s all right. I’m a Mormon.”
“Really?” Priscilla handed Rachael a glass of milk.
“Then we have a lot in common already.”
Rachael took a drink of milk, unsure how to
respond to that. Two more women came in from
the back of the dome. One of them had brown
braids that stuck out from the sides of her head
as if she were a child. The other practically was a
child, with bright red hair pulled into an untidy
bun. They were both laughing, flushed, and carry-
ing buckets of cleaning supplies. The redhead was
pregnant.
They dropped their buckets and sat down at the
table. “Rachael, meet my sister-wives,” Priscilla said.
“Amelia and Lorraine. This is Rachael Murray. She’s
a Mormon, and her husband’s a scientist.”
“He’s a Mormon, too,” Rachael said, feeling stu-
pid. She shook hands with Amelia, the one in the
braids. When Lorraine took Rachael’s hand, her
eyes widened. “Did you know you’re pregnant?”
“Me?” Rachael asked, shocked.
“Oh, yes.” Lorraine winked. “I have a knack for
knowing these things.”
“Congratulations.” Priscilla beamed at her. “Lor-
raine’s never been wrong.”
“Uh, thanks.” Rachael took another swig of milk
and pressed her hand to her belly, wondering if
Lorraine could be right. She tried to remember the
last time she’d had a period, but couldn’t.
72 Irreantum
 “So, your husband’s digging up an old temple?”
Amelia asked.
“Yes. He’s the project director. Very busy.” She
tore off a crust of bread and looked down at the
table. Her heart grew heavy in her chest.
“They’ve probably found some interesting things,”
Lorraine said.
“Yes.” Rachael took the meditation stone out of
her pocket and set it on the table. Brilliant colors
exploded and faded, exploded again.
Priscilla picked it up. “Beautiful.”
“It’s called a meditation stone. They found hun-
dreds in the temple’s inner sanctum.”
“Hard to believe there were people living here
once. Aliens.”
Rachael nodded. “I often wonder what happened
to them.”
“They were destroyed.” Rachael looked up at a
man that could only be Mr. Pullman. He was tall
with a thick, black beard, and though he was slen-
der he filled the room with his somber authority.
“They were wicked, and God destroyed them from
the face of this earth to make room for us in our
promised land.”
Rachael could only stare. She wanted to point
out that the natives had disappeared a thousand
years ago, and that Heavenly Father would never
prepare a promised land for someone like Pullman.
Or would He?
Priscilla broke the awkward silence. She rose to
her feet. “Rachael, meet our husband, Isaac Pullman.
This is Rachael Murray. Her husband is working at
the old temple.”
Pullman nodded. “I spoke with your husband
when we arrived. He seems like a good man.”
Rachael nodded and tried to smile. He was a
good man, kind and generous. But he hadn’t come
home last night. She felt slightly sick.
“Get the children inside,” Pullman told his
wives. “There’s a severe storm coming this way.”
He turned to Rachael. “It looks like you’ll be with
us for a while, Sister Murray.”
She bristled at the appellation. “I don’t want to
impose. I’ll leave now before the storm hits.”
“That would be unwise. You underestimate the
severity of the storm. It is no mere thunderstorm
out there.”
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Rachael stood and started to protest, but Priscilla
laid a hand on her arm. “It’s no imposition, dear.
We’d love to have you ride out the storm with us.”
Her voice was quiet but carried a hint of pleading.
Please don’t defy my husband.
Rachael forced a smile. “Thank you. I’m grateful
for your hospitality.”
“Your husband knows you’re here?” Pullman
asked her with a frown.
“Uh, no actually. It was sort of a spur-of-the-
moment trip.”
“I see.” His expression darkened into disap-
proval. “We’ll try to contact him over the radio. We
wouldn’t want him to worry.”
“That’s very thoughtful.” Rain had already started
to drum against the roof of the dome. Rachael
helped the women gather in the children. Max and
Lessa rushed to her arms, flushed and breathless,
offered whirlwind kisses and were off again. She
smiled to see them so happy.
The main room was filled with children. The older
kids gathered in clumps around board games or
sat alone with hand-held games or books. Younger
children lined the tables working puzzles or making
pictures, while others ran noisily around them all.
She met two more wives, Joanne and Michele,
and the five Pullman women churned out a mirac-
ulous number of peanut butter sandwiches. Some-
one cleared the dome roof so they could watch
the storm. The rain came down heavy without
stopping, and lightning laced the sky above them.
Thunderclaps loud enough to shake the dome
caused moments of awestruck silence, so that the
noise level in the room rose and fell like the swell
of waves on the sea.
Pullman informed her that radio communica-
tion was down. “I couldn’t raise the dig.”
Rachael nodded. “Thanks for trying.” She felt
suddenly, horribly cut off from James, from her
home. Lessa climbed onto her lap and sucked her
thumb. Rachael stroked her dark curls. Her heart
was as dark and heavy as the sky outside.
Pullman sat down on a couch with Lorraine and
Michele on either side. He put an arm around each
of them, and they laid their heads against his shoul-
ders. Rachael frowned, then realized what she was
doing and tried to keep her expression pleasant.
73 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
After all, they had shown her nothing but kindness
even when she intruded on their work and inter-
rupted their routine. The Pullman children had
circled her kids with friendship without hesitation.
She may not like the marriage arrangement, but for
now the Pullmans were all she had.
Priscilla sat down beside her. “Do you get a lot
of storms like this here?”
Another thunderclap brought an ebb in the gen-
eral noise. Rachael shook her head. “I’ve never seen
anything like it.” She wondered what was happen-
ing at the dig.
Unremitting webs of lightning covered the sky.
The lights flickered and went out. A few of the
little ones started to cry. Rachael held onto Lessa
and tried to track down Max in the dark. Someone
produced a flashlight, and Priscilla and her sister-
wives proceeded to light candles around the room.
The tension subsided.
Pullman sent his older boys out to check on the
other families in the settlement. Rachael finally got
Max in hand and sat down in a rocker with both
her children in her lap. She closed her eyes against
the darkness. It might have been midnight outside
instead of mid-afternoon.
“Look at that,” someone said. Rachael opened
her eyes. One of the older girls was pointing at the
meditation stone still sitting on the table. It was
glowing, not with colors but with a pure white
light. She stood up, knocking Max and Lessa off
her lap. They trailed behind her as she went to the
table and picked up the stone.
“It’s warm.”
Priscilla came over and touched the stone almost
reverently. Lorraine, looking over her shoulder, whis-
pered, “Like a light from God.” It cast a soft gleam
over Rachael’s hand and formed a circle of light on
the floor around her. It lit up the children gathered
around her knees like little angels.
“Let me see it.” Pullman strode toward them.
She held it out for him, though she wanted to stuff
it into her pocket before he could touch it. He
held out his hand, and she would have dropped
the stone into it, but she glanced out the window
just then and dropped the stone on the floor in her
astonishment.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
The pillar of fire had appeared. Only it wasn’t
a pillar. More like a wall of flame filling the sky.
Rachael picked up the meditation stone off the
floor. Pullman had turned around to see what had
upset her, and soon the whole family was gathered
around in a knot watching the flames dance, shot
through with lightning. “It looks real,” someone
said softly.
She could have used
the pillar of fire
to guide her home,
had it not spread itself
across the sky
as far as she could see.
“It isn’t real,” Rachael whispered. “It’s just a
mirage.” Just a mirage. Lightning split the sky, and
thunder roared like the wrath of God. She won-
dered if lightning had struck the temple, if some
of the flames were real. Her mouth went dry. “I
should go.”
“What?”
“My husband. They may need help down at the
dig. I have to go.”
“That’s insane.” Pullman looked at her as if she
were an unruly child. “You’d never make it in this.
There’s not even a road.”
Rachael looked past him out the windows at the
red sky. A horrible dread crept through her veins.
“Something’s wrong.” She shuddered. “I have to
find out if James is all right.”
She turned to Priscilla. “Can Max and Lessa stay
here?”
“Of course.”
Rachael headed for the door, but Pullman moved
to block her way. “Your children will have to stay
here permanently if you get yourself killed out
there.”
“I won’t.” Her heart tried to pound its way out
through her throat. She clenched her hands into fists,
ready to swing at him if he wouldn’t let her past.
74 Irreantum
 “Mommy?” Max tugged on her sleeve, and all
the air went out of her. She stooped down and
hugged him. “Where are you going?” His eyes were
wide with fear.
“I’m going to check on Daddy and make sure
he’s okay.”
“Is he hurt?”
“No. I just want to see if they need help at the
dig, that’s all.” She stroked his hair. “Say a prayer,
okay? Everything will be fine.”
Lessa toddled up to her and started to cry. Rachael
held her. “Hush, darling. Hush. I’ll be back. You be
a good girl now.” She handed Lessa off to a teen-
age daughter and gave Max one last kiss. “Be good,
Max. Watch your sister for me.”
Max sniffed and nodded his head. With one
final glance at Isaac Pullman’s dark scowl, she was
out the door and in the storm.
The rain slammed into her, and the electricity in
the air stood her hair on end. She sprinted for the
jeep and jumped inside, already drenched. She put
the meditation stone on the dashboard. The soft
glow calmed her shattered nerves somewhat.
The jeep started easily, but the nav system was
down. She could have used the pillar of fire to
guide her home, had it not spread itself across the
sky as far as she could see. Shaking, she pulled out
and drove in the direction she thought the pillar
should lie when confined to its usual limitations.
The storm had turned the terrain into a boggy
mess. The jeep’s tires threw up chunks of mud that
splattered against the windows. Only in the bright
flash of the lightning could she see the landscape
around her.
She lumbered over rocks and around trees. She
knew she was lost when she came to a thicket too
tangled to take the jeep through. Frustrated, she
tried another direction, but she had no idea which
way to go.
The ground grew softer the farther she drove.
Before long, the front wheels sank into the mud,
and try as she might she could go no further. Isaac
Pullman was right. She was a fool.
Already the mirage was fading and true darkness
coming on. She supposed that meant that the temple
wasn’t on fire and James didn’t need her at all. Her
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stomach clenched. She was hungry and hadn’t
thought to bring any food.
She dared not get out of the jeep with the light-
ning arcing overhead. She tried the radio to no
effect. The deluge continued, and the temperature
dropped. She huddled into her flannel shirt, shiver-
ing and wondering how she had come to be here in
the first place.
She choked back a sob. All she had ever wanted
was to keep her family together. This wasn’t how it
was supposed to be. She should have been some-
where surrounded by friends and family and fellow
saints. She should have had neighbors to call on
when she was in trouble. She should be teaching
Primary children on Sundays and planning fam-
ily home evenings, not stuck in the mud in some
abandoned wilderness, freezing to death all alone.
She bent over to retrieve the meditation stone
from the floor, where it had rolled during the drive.
She cupped her hands around it, letting it warm
her. The prayer that had died on her lips last night
came pouring out of her in a torrent, not so much
in words as in a swell of emotion. Dear God, if you
can hear me, then hear me. Help me.
The stone glowed brighter, the warmth spread-
ing up her arms and through her body. Still the
light brightened until it filled the jeep, filled her
vision, and consumed the darkness outside.
Except there was no outside. She wasn’t in the
jeep anymore. The light dimmed and resolved into
a chamber suffused with warmth and music—
beautiful, unearthly music that seemed to emanate
from everywhere and nowhere at all.
She recognized the place, though she had never
been there. She was in the Temple of the Flame, in
the inner sanctum. There was the engraved altar
just as James had described it. Only she’d been too
angry to hear him.
She knelt and traced the pictures with her fin-
ger—the pillar, the forest, others that she couldn’t
decipher. She saw no meditation stones other than
the one she still clutched in one hand.
She set the stone on the altar and settled cross-
legged onto the floor to listen to the unseen choir.
She closed her eyes. The music washed over her,
washed away the jeep and the mud, the rain and
75 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
the thunder, the pain and the fear. Her burdens
sloughed away. She was light as a sigh, empty, and
ready to be filled.
Images wandered through her consciousness,
faces and bits of conversations. She let them go, let
them slide around and bump into each other. Lessa
threw her arms around Rachael’s neck while Isaac
Pullman condemned the vanished natives, and
Lorraine leaned over, saying, “Did you know you’re
pregnant?” as James pulled her into the warmth of
his passion.
Max tugged at her sleeve and watched her with
his plaintive eyes, and James slammed the door
behind him. Priscilla handed her a slice of bread,
and James dropped a sparkling meditation stone
into her hand.
Then the pillar of fire appeared, bright and
compelling. She knelt before it and watched all the
disparate pieces of her life come together, pieces as
delicate as butterflies and bright as lightning, pieces
hard as diamonds and soft as a whisper, pieces won-
derful and wicked, sorrowful and exalting. They
shifted and rearranged and slid into her soul, fitting
together as snugly as a jigsaw puzzle.
She was filled again with all the burdens and
blessings of life. She let them settle inside of her,
the bitter and the sweet. Then she stood and spread
her arms out and let the pillar embrace her.
“Rachael? Rachael, please respond.”
Her eyes snapped open. The jeep was cold
and dark. The storm had ended, and Mirage’s stars
shone bright in the sky, but the gray edge of dawn
brushed the tops of the trees.
“Rachael! Can you hear me?” Marta’s voice
crackled from the radio. Rachael fumbled for it.
“Yes. I’m here, Marta. I hear you.”
“Oh, thank God. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m not hurt. The jeep is stuck in the mud.”
“Okay. Just sit tight. We’ve got you on the nav
system now. James is almost there.”
“Thank you.”
Rachael leaned back against the seat. The medi-
tation stone had stopped glowing. Even the shifting
colors were gone. It sat in her hand as lifeless as any
rock, but the warmth remained inside of her.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Another jeep pulled up behind her, and she had
to shield her eyes against the glare of the headlights.
James pulled open her door. She tumbled into his
arms.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m hungry.” She shivered. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Rachael.” He held her against him. “I’m
the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed away.”
She kept her face pressed into his shoulder, sud-
denly afraid to look into his face.
“I was miserable. Barry kept telling me to go
home, but I was stubborn. Forgive me.”
Barry. She breathed again. Barry, not Marta. Of
course not Marta. Had she really suspected that? She
looked up at him and smiled. “You’re forgiven.”
Over his shoulder, she saw Isaac Pullman direct-
ing his boys to bring their truck around to pull the
jeep from the mud. He didn’t look in her direction.
Just as well.
“How are the kids?”
“Fine. They’re sound asleep over at the home-
steaders’.” He led her toward his jeep. “It’s nice to
have neighbors, isn’t it?”
She murmured her assent as James bundled her
into the jeep, wrapped her in a blanket, and handed
her a cup of cocoa. “Even if they are polygamists.”
James climbed in beside her and put his arm around
her. She sipped cocoa, leaning against his shoulder.
“You should have seen the temple during the
storm. You wouldn’t believe what happened.”
“I think I would,” she whispered.
“They weren’t primitives, Rach. We’re looking at
technology far beyond our own. The storm brought
it to life. This could be the most amazing discovery
of my career.”
“Congratulations.” She yawned. She wanted to
tell him about the meditation stone and what she
had seen, but suddenly she couldn’t keep her eyes
open. She would tell him later.
“It might extend the project, you know.” He hes-
itated. “We could be here longer than we planned.
If you’re unhappy, if you want to take the kids and
go home . . .” He stopped. “Please don’t leave me,”
he whispered.
Rachael sat up. She cupped his cheek in her
hand. “It’s okay, James.” She leaned over and kissed
76 Irreantum
him. “I am home,” she said, then remembered
Lorraine and laughed out loud.
He straightened. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“You are? You’re sure?”
She laughed again. “A psychic polygamist told
me. She’s never been wrong.”
A smile split his face. “That’s wonderful.
Wonderful.”
“An amazing discovery.” She yawned again, but
James interrupted it to kiss her, and the sun rose,
effulgent, above the treetops.
Irreantum
S t o r y
The Care of the State
By Brian Evenson
I n late August rumors reached me that on the
morning of August 23, eleven days after his six-
tieth birthday, Brother Prater had put an end to his
life. The Daily Herald clipping my mother sent me
reported that his death had occurred at a short dis-
tance from my and his hometown, where the rail-
road tracks curve through a stand of aspen before
passing through fields. Prater apparently stepped out
of this stand of aspens, knelt, and placed his head
on one of the rails. None of the newspaper accounts
I subsequently tracked down indicated whether
Prater’s head was positioned so as to look toward
the oncoming train or away from it. Perhaps this
fact could not be determined, though it strikes me
as being of the utmost importance.
The obituary which ran in the Herald a day later
was titled “He is with Christ.” Not surprisingly, it
contained no mention of the fact that Prater had
taken his own life. Instead, the obituary spoke
of the dead man’s church service, his dedication
to and care for the members of his congregation,
his love of family, his love of God, his astounding
openness and patience. It degenerated into increas-
ingly generic praise, until, almost by way of an
aside, the last line of the obituary stated without
further explanation that for two years (1986–88)
Prater had been “under the care of the state.”
It was this curiously disconnected, unexplained
final statement, coupled with the unusual manner
of Prater’s suicide, which led me to reconsider my
sketchy impressions of my former bishop. He had
always struck me as stalwart and faithful, stable in
every way. When I was a teenager, he had often
been held up to me as an example. There had been
no indication that he would ever be under the care
of the state, whatever that phrase meant.
After receiving the Herald article and the obitu-
ary, I telephoned my mother. She did not know,
she said, what “under the care of the state” meant
either. She had been as surprised as I was upon first
77 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
reading the obituary. She could not, though she had
considered it at length, remember Prater being absent
from the ward for two years for any reason at all.
In fact, during the period of absence mentioned in
the article, he had been bishop. She remembered
having seen him every, or nearly every, Sunday. She
remembered having heard, however, that in 1985
or 1986 or 1987 Prater had resigned from his job
as an accountant with Wilder, Benson and Moscuvy
to go into business for himself. She wasn’t sure of
the details, didn’t know what type of business, but
it hadn’t lasted more than a year or two, and then
he had rejoined his former firm. Perhaps, she sug-
gested, the state had assisted him in some unknown
but invaluable fashion during that period.
Two months later, when I found myself still think-
ing about Prater—his perpetually firm bishop’s hand-
shake, his head on the track facing away from or
toward the train, both his hands grasping the sides
of the pulpit, his ear to the rail listening for the
train’s approach—I made arrangements to return
home for a few days. My mother picked me up at
the airport. As we drove the fifty miles home from
the airport through a landscape of dead grass and
rock and frost, my mother recited the usual litany
of news—immediate family, then extended, then
friends and ward members—quickly moving from
the familiar to people I knew only vaguely or not
at all.
“What about Prater?” I asked.
“No news,” she said. Then added, “He’s still
dead, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I suggested that was not what I was asking.
“I see that you’re not here to see me at all,” she
said. “You’re here to see Prater.”
“You sent me the clipping.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” she said. We
drove a while in silence, climbing up over the icy,
gray rim of one valley, falling into the next.
When we finally reached home, I put my suit-
case in my childhood room and walked to Prater’s
house. It was a simple brick affair, identical in all
important particulars to the houses around it. Prater’s
wife seemed not displeased to see me. She remem-
bered my name, asked about my current life, asked
about my mother, offered me a glass of water. Her
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
husband’s death, she told me, had been a complete
surprise. He was doing well. He was successful in
business, she wanted me to know, and he had been
happy in every way. He had nothing to hide, she
claimed. She had every reason to believe, she said
not without a trace of hysteria, that he had not
committed suicide but had been killed. When I
asked her what evidence she had for this, she chose
to speak instead of her husband’s service to the
church, his dedication to and care for members of
his congregation, his love for his family.
I asked her if she had written his obituary. She
nodded her head. It needed a wife’s touch: it had
been her duty.
I was puzzled by something in it, I told her, by
the last line’s mention of “under the care—”
She was shaking her head before I could finish. It
had been a mistake, she told me, the one thing she
had not in fact written. It had been either inserted
by accident, transposed from another obituary, or
was some kind of cruel joke, in very poor taste.
She had called the paper to complain as soon as
it appeared, but it was already too late. I must not
believe it, she said. It had nothing to do with her
husband.
I apologized, took a sip of water, and we passed
on to other topics. She spoke generally, about the
ward and the neighborhood, until she seemed calm
again, then I asked her what business her husband
had been involved in for the few years he had bro-
ken with Wilder, Benson and Moscuvy.
She became agitated. She reached out and grabbed
my hand. She was sure, she said, that her husband
had been killed. He had not committed suicide. In
any case, she said, taking my glass and leading me
toward the door, I was not to believe anything that
they were saying about her husband. He had been
as perfect as a man could be, she said. God could
testify to that. She had been glad to see me again,
she said firmly, but now she had other matters to
attend to.
I spent the next few days in the company of my
mother. I told her about my visit to Prater’s wife,
her anxiety. She refused to comment at first. There
couldn’t be any truth to what she had said, I sug-
gested. Clearly it was a suicide.
78 Irreantum
 “It’s her right,” said my mother. “She’s in mourn-
ing.”
“There’s something she isn’t telling.”
My mother shrugged, stayed on the couch
holding her magazine, looking out the window.
Eventually she told me that what I was lacking was
empathy. What she lacked was a proper sense of
curiosity, I told her, then asked to borrow her car.
I spent the early afternoon in the library, looking
at the other obituaries that had appeared alongside
Prater’s. The phrase the care of the state fit no better
in any of these obituaries. I searched forward and
backward a few days, found no obituaries to which
it might possibly appertain.
By late afternoon I had made my way up Sec-
ond North to the Herald office to meet with James
Mullen, the editor who oversaw, among other things,
the obituary page. I showed him the clipping and
asked him if he remembered it.
He took it, peered at it cursorily, handed it back
to me.
“No,” he said.
I explained to him the problem with the last
line, reminded him that Mrs. Prater had called to
complain. He looked at it more carefully.
“I remember it now,” he said slowly. “Are you
with her?”
Mrs. Prater? No, I wasn’t with her.
“Who are you with?”
Nobody, I told him. I was a former member of
Prater’s congregation. I wanted to know why he
had killed himself.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat playing with his tie, knocking the end of
it against his knuckles.
“I didn’t look over the obit,” he said. “My assis-
tant did. Charles Decker.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“He’s gone now.”
“Gone?”
“Fired. Over that particular obit, matter of fact.
He was a decent assistant all told, but had some
peculiarities. He wasn’t altogether well.”
“How did the line slip into the obituary in the
first place?”
“He put it there. He wrote it.”
Irreantum
“Why?”
“Because he said it was true.”
“Was it?”
“Yes,” he said. “In fact it was.”
“But you fired him anyway?”
He leaned toward me, tapped the obituary. “These
things are not about truth,” he said. “They’re about
something else entirely.”
T he state mental hospital sits in the foothills in
what was once the area east of town but which
is now part of the town itself. When I had been a
boy, it had been isolated. Every year, in some strange
attempt at either therapy or resignation, they had
run a haunted house, allowing certain of the inmates
to dress up as monsters. Now it was less conspicu-
ous; there were houses near the grounds, a water
park with multiple slides on the hill just above it.
Mullen’s directions allowed me to find Decker’s
particular building without difficulty. I followed
the long drive up toward the main structure, a
long gray-green building with barred windows, but
turned before reaching it, then parked and walked
past a chapel to a sturdy cinderblock house near the
fence. It seemed an ordinary house, though on closer
inspection I could see that the window frames were
nailed down. The glass of the windows was not
glass at all but two sheets of thick Plexiglas with a
wire mesh between, the Plexiglas scratched, beryled
with sunlight. The door itself was made of metal,
painted to have a wood grain pattern. The name
Brighton House was on a greening iron plate
above the door frame.
Decker, I discovered, was a warder of sorts for a
group of more stable patients living in this halfway
house. On their way back to society, the patients
lived there, interacting, free to come and go during
the day as long as they took their medication on
schedule and returned at night. Some of them held
jobs and went out regularly. Others could not be
convinced to leave their rooms. He had no other
home and was obliged to be on the grounds all but
six hours of any given twenty-four hour period. He
had no family, no girlfriend.
“They don’t keep warders here long,” he told
me. “Unless they’re me.” We sat in his bedroom,
a small room with a private telephone line and
79 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
another metal door, this one dented and scratched
on the outside.
He had been a warder for twelve straight years
before moving to the Herald, three times longer
than anyone else had lasted. Eventually the job
made anyone crazy, he said, and for the last two of
those twelve years he had been substantially mad-
der than any of those he supervised, though he
claimed he was quite sane now. He had, he said,
in the last two years of his previous stint as warder,
begun to appropriate the symptoms of other patients,
as if mental illness were infectious.
When I asked about my former bishop, he told
me Prater had lived in Brighton House from 1986
to 1988, after a severe breakdown (the details of
which Decker had never been told) and in the middle
of a bout of depression. He had been a bishop at
the time and had been counseled by his psychiatrist
to give up his church position because of his declin-
ing mental health. In the end, he had agreed to give
up his calling, take a leave of absence from his job,
and go into treatment, his psychiatrist arranging a
stay for him at Brighton House.
Except it wasn’t that simple, Decker said. Prater’s
wife didn’t want him to resign as bishop, and he
himself didn’t want to resign either. He needed it,
he felt. It ratified his existence. To resign would
only throw him deeper into depression, he feared.
Yet, if his breakdown and struggle with depression
were generally known, he would be forced to resign
as bishop. He needed to find a way to receive treat-
ment while at the same time continuing to serve in
his church position.
After several months of living in Brighton
House, he confided to Decker that he had not
resigned as bishop after all. He continued to pre-
side at church on Sundays, telling nobody that he
was no longer living at home. He had individual
and group sessions at the State Hospital during the
day, but made sure to show up near his home every
day around five carrying a briefcase to maintain the
illusion that all was well. He had dinner there and
then returned to Brighton House, where he would
have dinner as well. He had let nobody know about
Brighton House, and continued to act in his role
as a bishop as if nothing had happened. Sundays
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
would find him depressed and exhausted, over-
whelmed by the weight of his calling, and Monday
and Tuesday it was usually all Decker could do to
coax him out of bed. He was hardly getting better,
perhaps getting worse.
He began to hide in his bedroom during the day,
terrified that someone who knew him from church
might see him. He would go out only with his face
swaddled in scarves, removing the scarves only once
safely away from the hospital grounds. He invented
a profession for himself—an entrepreneur involved
in latex—and eventually began to speak about it,
even around Decker, as if it were real. When Decker
reminded him that it wasn’t real, he would become
irate. Once he spent an entire night banging on
Decker’s door with a stone, yelling that he was
going to kill him. Then he retreated for his room,
refusing to speak or move for almost three days.
Decker could have had him committed to the main
facility, but didn’t.
“It’s like that sometimes,” said Decker. “You get
used to it.” He pulled out one of his dresser draw-
ers and held it out to me. It was full of earplugs of
all different sizes, colors, and noise resistances. He
extolled the advantages of each. “With this one,”
he said, touching one, “I couldn’t hear him at all.”
Sometimes he kept them in for days at a time, he
said. He would walk around Brighton House or out
on his errands and communicate with people just
by guessing what they were saying. It usually didn’t
make any difference, he said: the connection was
just as genuine, or just as phony, depending on
how you looked at it.
He took the drawer away from me, held it on
his lap as he continued to speak. There followed
for Prater a range of shifts in behavior, he indicated.
One day he would curse God, the next he would
spend entirely on his knees, praying. He became
obsessed with plants, reading books on the indig-
enous species of the region. He learned to speak
eloquently about how this land had once been
desert and wilderness and needed to be returned
to desert and wilderness. He came to feel the non-
indigenous plants were a kind of insult and set out
selectively uprooting them. When the gardener com-
plained, he was asked to stop and did for a time,
80 Irreantum
despite his anxiety. One night when Prater did not
come back for his medication, Decker went in search
of him and found him on the lawn with a carpet
knife, cutting up small hunks of sod and chewing
them up. He had to be sedated, and there was talk
of moving him to the main facility. Instead, he was
prescribed a slightly more potent medication and
eventually managed to restrict his destruction of non-
native plants to areas outside of the asylum fence.
As he spoke Decker kept putting in earplugs and
taking them out, piling them to one side, on the
bedspread. I found this disconcerting. It was about
this time, he said, that Prater’s obsession with stones
began: the theological significance of stones. Jesus
was the rock of the Church, the Ten Command-
ments were set in stone, the stone had been rolled
away by the angel to release Christ from the tomb.
At his worse, Prater couldn’t utter a sentence with-
out saying the word stone or rock or mentioning
some particular type of stone: he was always speak-
ing of what was next on the slate or taking things
for granite instead of granted. He began to gather
stones, bringing back handfuls and pocketfuls of
them at the end of the day, until eventually all his
drawers were full of them and there was a layer of
stones spread over his floor, the room itself slowly
filling. If he, Decker, had not put a stop to it, Prater
would have filled the room to the top.
He put in a pair of earplugs and stood and led
me to the door. He ushered me out of his room and
down the hall. In the common room were four men,
all relatively normal in appearance. They stared at
me until I had passed by. I went out the front door,
Decker behind me.
“You see,” he said, stepping onto the grass, speak-
ing slightly louder than he had been. “None of this
should be here; it’s unnatural. There should be noth-
ing but dirt and scrub and the taller dried grasses.
I can understand that. Prater was right. But the
stones are a little harder to understand. I’m not a
religious man.”
We began to walk. He had left before Prater had,
eventually getting a job at the newspaper. Prater, he
heard, had eventually cut off his relationship with
Brighton House, pronouncing himself cured, and
had gone back to accountancy. Prater wasn’t stable,
Irreantum
Decker insisted, but he could do a good imitation
of stability. Then, almost a year ago, Decker had
proofread a notice for the paper saying that Prater
had been released from being bishop, someone
named Kyle Hodges being called in his place. It
won’t be long now until he’s back in Brighton
House, Decker had thought.
By that time we had reached the gate. The sun
had begun to set on the other side of the valley,
torn in half by the peak beyond the lake, the lake
itself a blinding sheen of gold. When notice of
Prater’s suicide arrived, he said, he realized that he
had been wrong. Then the obituary had come in:
no mention of the suicide, no mention of any of
Prater’s difficulties, just the same old stuff. It was as
if, even though dead, Prater was still hiding. “So I
decided to out him. But don’t think it was for him
or for some higher moral purpose. It was for my
own good as much as for his.”
He shook my hand slowly. “I could have been
him,” he said. “You too, or you wouldn’t have gone
to all this trouble.” He held my hand an uncom-
fortable moment, then turned to move back toward
Brighton House, the low sun casting his shadow long
over the grounds. He stood in front of Brighton
House turning his ring of keys over and over in
his hand, the sun glinting off them until it slipped
below the mountain, leaving both of us alone in
the gathering dark.
Brian Evenson teaches creative writing at Brown Uni-
versity. He is the author of six books of fiction, most
recently a neo-noir novella called The Brotherhood
of Mutilation. He is currently working on a book
in part about William Hooper Young, a grandson of
Brigham Young who ritually murdered a woman in
New York in 1903. He is a senior editor for Con-
junctions magazine and the recipient of an O. Henry
Award.
81 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 S t o r y
The Meek Shall Inherit
By Samuel Brown
Editor’s note: This story received an honorable men-
tion in the 2003 IRREANTUM contest.
H er wild eyes brood over the pool, trying to
take possession of him. Her stare frightens
him, and he hesitates before taking her calloused
hand in his. The water is hot, and he shudders with
an almost irresistible urge to urinate, whether from
the warm water or simple fear, he can’t say. Soon
it won’t make a difference. He wonders what color
yellow will appear against the cheery brightness
of the green and white tile. He pinches his thighs
together to dam his bladder and expels a staccato
sigh.
Jonathan still isn’t sure what drew him to her.
After he’d spent a morning of knocking uninter-
ested doors, her trailer park had appeared emblem-
atic of the moral failings of the entire state of Nevada.
Gamblers, hookers, and sideshow freaks lingered in
mobile homes decorated with neon signs, Christ-
mas lights in the shape of arrows, and the occasional
slot machine parked on the grass. The ranchers had
long since deserted Winnemucca, and the detritus
expelled from Las Vegas’s underbelly had accumu-
lated in their place.
But her trailer had been different. It had a his-
tory. Drooping lines of aluminum bark encased its
infirm walls, once-white segments smudged to dirty
gray. The monotony was interrupted at exactly four
points: a door, two windows, and a jeremiad writ-
ten in seismographic cursive on an appliance box
beside the door.
evile man who attack us
i know you are comming
and we are redy.
“Boy, do they need the gospel. They’re either
crazy or right, and both are horrible places to
be,” Jonathan pronounced in the tone of voice he
reserved for aphorisms.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Elder Lilburn Boggs, named in jest by his Jack-
Mormon father after the Missouri governor who
ordered the Mormons exterminated, responded,
“Blessed are the persecuted, right?” His father
hadn’t let his mother change the birth certificate,
and by the time she got around to divorcing him
the name had stuck. Lile—as he preferred to be
called, the spelling his own—was perfectly content
with the surname he shared with none of his sib-
lings.
Jonathan had liked Lile from the beginning.
They both had a sense of perspective about being
missionaries for Jesus when they were barely old
enough to vote. Not that they didn’t like the work.
The improbability of their responsibilities notwith-
standing, they had thrown themselves into mission-
ary work wholeheartedly. Both had been appointed
zone leader after just six months, an early promo-
tion that vindicated their sense of commitment.
For Jonathan, the drudgery of proselytizing strangers
had been made lighter by Lile’s presence, and the
hostile trailer sounded a call for help that needed
answering.
The door opened tentatively, seconds after Jon-
athan’s fist had struck. The knob was held by a
middle-aged woman with skin the color of baking
chocolate—a severe contrast to her amber-colored
hair. Her face was expressionless as she whispered
heavily, “What do you want?” Her eyes were fixed
on Lile’s Adam’s apple, like a raccoon hypnotized
by a shiny bauble.
T hey should have run then, Jonathan thinks as
he inhales her fear. Left her for God and Satan
to sort out between themselves, like a female Job.
But they embarked on the path of good intentions,
and now it is too late to reconsider their course.
Her hair is slithery, as if it would be hard to
grasp, though he has not yet immersed her in the
sacramental water. Her patina of sweat makes the
hot pool seem warmer, which adds nausea to his
urge to urinate. Half to distract himself, Jonathan
wonders where Lile is at this moment. Having
someone who had witnessed the preface might give
him the courage to go through with the baptism.
But Lile is gone, transferred to Reno to do battle
82 Irreantum
with sins advertised in purple neon and dispensed
by jingling machines with robotic arms.
He holds her in his arms, right arm cupped
behind her back, left forearm clutched by both of
her hands. Her entire body is rigid like a frozen
scarecrow, and he hopes that if he waits she will melt
enough for him to fold her into the font. His thighs
are shaking, and his thumb has begun to stiffen.
He tries not to look directly at her, because her eyes
are flitting back and forth between her hands and
his face, waiting for his eyes to be available so she
can accuse her captor. He feels his grasp tightening
around her wrist as he tries to control his distressing
urge, and he forces himself to relax his hand.
J onathan had answered her first question on the
doorstep indirectly, after an imperceptible con-
sultation with Lile. “Ma’am, we understand that
you need some help, and we’re preachers. We want
to talk to you about Jesus and how he loves you.”
She bowed. “Yes, we like preachers. Dilon and I
like preachers.” She did not open the door further,
but shuffled to the couch in a motion that decayed
into an equivocal invitation.
After exchanging uncertain glances, Jonathan
and Lile entered an open room with dusty wooden
floors and a matted sofa slouching in the far corner.
A bank of unfinished Formica cabinets enclosed a
peeling countertop connecting a sink and gas range.
The pulsing flashes of a television screen were vis-
ible through the slit of an open door beside the sofa.
T he fluorescent ceiling light reflects off the
surface of the font, its chlorination imparting
an ethereal green to the white expanse of her eyes.
Jonathan can hardly bear another moment in the
water, and he eases his right arm to the square. He
has always loved that phrase, “to the square.” In
seminary, he had assumed it was an oblique refer-
ence to awkwardness. When his father had explained
the symbolism of rectitude, law, and obedience,
Jonathan had smirked, “So why isn’t it to the
ninety degrees? That would make more sense. It’s
not like you’re actually making a square.” His father
had patted his back affectionately. Raising his arm
for ordinances still reminds him of his father.
Irreantum
Now he watches the imaginary plumb line that
hangs against gravity from the crook of his elbow
up toward her spidery hair. To the square. To the
ninety. To the box.
T hey had started simply, with pieces torn from
their memorized image of the first discussion.
God, Jesus, prophets, and the navy blue Book of Mor-
mon, its title emblazoned in gold-colored ink. Always
the same, always exactly the right thing to say.
She was involved in the discussion from Jonathan’s
first mention of God. “We believe in God. He sees
all. He is all-knowing.”
Lile segued into his principle without missing a
beat. “We know God is good to all of us. We also
know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. How do you
feel about the Savior?”
She scanned the space between them, hesitat-
ing. “Jesus is the Lord Jesus, the Lord.” Her eyes
flitted to the corners of the trailer, and she failed
to suppress a shudder. “They won’t leave us alone.
Why won’t Jesus make them stop?” she whimpered,
her expression so desperate her face lost its human
character.
“Who do you mean exactly?” Lile asked.
“The chasers. Every night I hear them crawling
under the floor. They laugh at us, and they say they’re
going to poison us and take Dilon away from me.
Even when I lock the doors, they keep coming.
I locked the windows. I locked the walls and the
cupboards. But they broke the lock on the stove—I
can hear them inside the pipes.”
Lile pursed his lips in a way that could be taken
as serious, though Jonathan could see laughter in
his eyes. Jonathan was strangely happy knowing
that they both were imagining the same scene—
six-inch green demons with fangs and webbed feet
scampering through the stovepipes.
The chaotic room conjured Jonathan’s home dur-
ing high school, disrupted by his grandmother in
her agonizing twilight after dementia had reduced
her to eating lipstick and brushing her teeth with
the Kiwi black shoe polish they were finally forced
to lock in the safe. His father’s sardonic smile had
made Jonathan’s laughter not only acceptable but
appropriate. “Jonny, never forget that our family
83 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
takes the state of our footwear deadly seriously.
Never let me see your shoes go unpolished.”
Though Jonathan realized the joke, the hygiene of
his shoes had become the treasured symbol of his
father. In the mission field he had taken to polish-
ing them every morning.
If his father had been with him—with this woman
whose stove was possessed—he would have known
what to do. He had perfect vision and ethical bal-
ance. While they had shared the humor of the
shoe polish, he had not laughed when Jonathan
mockingly lifted his arms like a bird in flight after
his grandmother burst from the bathroom wearing
only the sheer plastic shower curtain, a tawny Fle-
dermaus flapping frail wings against the wallpaper.
Jonathan had known instantly from his father’s
frown that he had crossed the line. After the shower
curtain incident, Jonathan had overcorrected and
never made any motion toward his grandmother,
who now lay in an upstairs bedroom screaming
about men in the moon and bugs on the doghouse.
With the frightened woman in a trailer park,
Jonathan still felt his father’s rebuke, and he main-
tained a serious expression. She continued, the
words deforming her mouth, “I think my enemies
are from the CIA, but I can’t be sure. They never
let me see them or their badges. They don’t leave
anything, but I hear them under the floors and in
the walls. They didn’t used to be hollow when we
moved in, but now they are. They hollowed them
out with their machines. I don’t know what to do.
I can’t sleep. I know Dilon is afraid.” Though she
didn’t raise her voice, her jumbled syllables formed
a juggernaut of fear.
“That must be very frightening for you.” Jonathan
hoped he sounded sympathetic. He pitied her and
didn’t want that feeling to be lost in his impatience
with the insane.
“I can’t sleep. I just lie awake and hear them in
the walls.” She stared at the missionaries as if they
were accessories in her persecution.
He fidgeted and had to speak to break the ten-
sion of her glare. “Do you feel any comfort from
prayer?”
“I pray all day every day, and Jesus won’t stop them.
Will you pray for us? Does Jesus hear preachers’ prayers?”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Lile responded while Jonathan was deciding what
to say. “We know he does. Let’s kneel together. I’ll
say the prayer.”
She watched them kneel and bow their heads
before she joined them on the floor, settling at a
safe distance in front of her chair. Their arms were
placed across their chests, while hers hung straight
down, palms against the floor.
Lile prayed confidently, “Father in Heaven, please
bless this kind woman and Dilon that they will be
protected from the forces that are terrorizing them.
Please show us what we can do to help them. We
ask thy blessing of peace on this house, in the name
of Jesus Christ, amen.”
She was in her seat again and staring at them
when they looked up from the prayer. The weak
creaking of her wooden chair seemed to be the
sound effect for her tentative smile, a vague contor-
tion of her lips that did not align with any single
emotion. Jonathan felt that their visit had stretched
too long and rose to leave. She rocked forward
in her chair reflexively, as if he had disrupted the
room’s tenuous equilibrium by standing.
Jonathan wanted his voice to calm her. “We
hope that the Lord will bless you. We’d like to
come back and share some more spiritual messages
with you.”
She didn’t respond as they gathered their belong-
ings but followed them toward the door, keeping
a respectful distance. On the doorstep, Jonathan
turned to her. “I didn’t catch your name.”
Her entire arm tensed, and the door moved
inches toward them, then stopped. She studied
his face as if she were searching for surveillance
cameras. For a second, she smirked, and then
she said, “I didn’t throw it.” Jonathan didn’t
know whether he could or should laugh, unsure
whether she intended to be laughed at. He
tugged his lips into the most cheerful grin he
could muster.
She whispered, “Billie Joe. I don’t have a last
name.”
“Thanks, Billie Joe. It was a pleasure to meet
you. God bless you and Dilon.”
As they returned to their bicycles, Lile asked,
“You ever met anyone that crazy?”
84 Irreantum
 “Yeah, wow. Poor lady.” He remembered the last
time his grandmother and Uncle Steve had been
together. Steve tried to suffocate her with a throw
pillow, green with wispy blue paisleys and tattered
chenille. She clawed so hard his arms bled, then
poked him in the eye and kicked him in the crotch
simultaneously. The sight of his disabled uncle still
haunted Jonathan four years later.
“God wouldn’t protect
Joe Smith either.
He prayed,
and the CIA sent a team.”
Lile continued, “Do you think she’s accountable?
I mean, do you think we should baptize her?”
Jonathan stopped walking. The court had insti-
tutionalized Steve after the surgery that failed to
save his eye. His uncle had never seemed guilty to
Jonathan; he seemed more an echo of the first natu-
ral man, living an exercise of freedom that Jonathan
almost admired. Baptizing Steve would have been
like throwing him in a wishing well.
“I doubt it. I don’t think she’d understand. In
Bible times, they exorcised them first, but I wouldn’t
even know how to do that. Plus, you don’t have
to be possessed to be schizophrenic. And we don’t
exorcise anymore anyway. Not since that Newell
Knight guy.”
“There you’re wrong, my friend. My buddy from
back home just did one. Some lady in Iowa. Yelling,
shrieking, the whole nine. It sounded really cool.”
“You think Billie Joe’s possessed?”
“Nah, just crazy. It’d be fun to try, though. Even
if it didn’t work. What, you don’t believe?”
“Not like in The Exorcist. I mean, in the relevant
sense—the devil clouding our judgment—we’re all
possessed to some degree. After all, that’s the spiri-
tual death we tell everybody about.”
Lile cocked an eyebrow and made chewing
motions with his mouth. His forehead wrinkled,
Irreantum
and he looked toward the sky before turning toward
Jonathan. “Deep. So why do we baptize anybody if
we’re all possessed?”
“We still have access to our wills. With schizo-
phrenia, people lose their wills completely. They
can’t choose anymore.” In his mind he saw Steve’s
sinister face, a scar leading to his glass eye.
“How do you know so much about this?”
“My uncle has schizophrenia. It’s all pretty messy,
trust me. We can see if the discussions help at all.
You may be right. The Spirit might help her some.”
“Yeah, and I totally want to see who Dilon is.”
J onathan cannot find Dilon in the audience star-
ing at them in the baptismal pool. There are no
other black faces in the room, just Billie Joe and her
reflection in the font mirrors. Jonathan feels sud-
denly sad for Dilon, afraid to ask where he is, hop-
ing that he has found his freedom but suspicious
that he is locked in the back room of the trailer,
with only the television to watch over him.
D ilon was sitting on the couch when they
arrived for the second discussion. He was
a slender, pubescent boy with curious eyes and a
halting gait. He was deferential, almost obsequi-
ous—too gentle and calm for the trailer’s goblins
and predators. His skin lacked the deeper hues
that sun exposure would have afforded, leaving a
duskiness to his face that made him seem unrelated
to Billie Joe.
He called the missionaries “Sir” and waited to
speak until they invited him to do so, then humbly
excused himself back to the television room. Billie
Joe stared at them after Dilon left. Jonathan won-
dered whether he should share the Joseph Smith
story with her—a truth quest derailed by the disclo-
sure of the all-seeing eye of divine surveillance—but
ultimately decided that she would understand that
it was a story about prayer and deliverance. He
began, “Elder Boggs and I would like to tell you
a story about a young boy who was looking for
answers from God. His name was Joseph Smith,
and he wanted to know what church to join.
“Because he needed to know the truth, and he
knew that God would never lie to him, he went to
85 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
a grove of trees to pray. During his prayer, God and
Jesus came to him in a pillar of light.”
She recoiled, sitting up straight in her chair, her
face sharp with anger. “They were a CIA trick. They
hide in the lights. At night I can see their shadows
on the walls. God wouldn’t protect Joe Smith either.
He prayed, and the CIA sent a team, and God
didn’t stop it. God never stops it.”
Lile’s skin was flushed pink with indignation.
“Sister Billie Joe, I testify to you that it was God and
Jesus in the pillar of light, and they brought a mes-
sage of love. The CIA didn’t even exist back then.”
She stubbornly resisted his logic. “They were
masons then. Masons and Catholics. They always
are. They got him, and they want to get me.” Light
played in her eyes like twilight extinguishing in the
linden shade of a cloistered street.
Jonathan thought before answering. He tried to
remember whether anyone had been able to refute
his uncle’s delusions. Steve hadn’t been much for
confrontation. But the only memory that had
penetrated his mother’s dementia was her hatred
for her gloomy son. Freed of the constraints of self-
awareness, she had immediately unleashed the pent-
up rage from decades of raising a troubled son.
Steve’s chief delusion—that his mother intended to
sacrifice him to Quetzlcoatl—required that he keep
close tabs on her, which meant babysitting the two
of them together, a task that fell disproportionately
to Jonathan as the oldest. Only reassuring nonsense
talk had eased Steve’s agitation, a chore that Jonathan
despised. He had been distracted by Battle of the
Planets on television when Steve made his near-
fatal move.
“Billie Joe, I have found that knowing about
God makes me feel peaceful. God is a God of love.
How does it make you feel?”
“He won’t stop them.”
Lile interloped in a milder voice, more in con-
trol. “Sometimes we don’t know God’s plan for us,
but we have to trust him and know that he loves
us.”
Billie Joe relaxed momentarily, as if she were
recovering a dim memory of a quieter era. Jonathan
was suddenly shy to disrupt the fragile peacefulness
of her face and motioned to Lile. “Sister Billie Joe,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
we testify to you that God loves you, and we want
to leave you with that thought.”
She sat on the couch, solemn and stiff. The nod
she offered was threatened, and the gentle passivity
of her face hardened into distrust as they rose to
leave. They were still on her porch when they heard
the chains tinkle and the deadbolt click.
J onathan’s face burns red with embarrassment as
he realizes that he has never asked her full name.
He has forgotten to inspect the baptismal recom-
mend paperwork and can think of no subtle way to
acquire the information.
“Billie Joe,” he whispers, “to do the baptism I
need to know your full name.”
She makes no response to his question.
He doesn’t want to frighten her, but he pushes
against her shoulder with his hand, whispering from
deep in his throat, “God wants to hear your name
said out loud. You can’t be baptized without it.”
Her body is stiff, impliable. She mumbles through
the gaps in her teeth, “Willhelmina Josephine Jacobs,”
then freezes again, as if she is waiting to reap the
consequences of her incautious lips. Jonathan
squeezes her hand tighter in an expression, he
hopes, of reassurance.
T he next time they visited Billie Joe, only Dilon’s
voice responded to their knocking. “I can’t let
you in; she locks up with the key. There’s a window
in my room that I can open, though, Sirs.”
His face was cheery through the burglar bars,
brighter than their first meeting. “Sirs, what you
talking about with my aunt? She don’t let much
visitors in, and we don’t get out.”
“We talk about God and Jesus.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, it is.” Dilon’s warmth emboldened Jona-
than, who couldn’t resist his curiosity. “What is
your aunt’s story? She seems really scared. Has she
always been like that?”
The boy pushed his cheeks against the bars, then
looked slowly both ways. “We started moving when
I was eight. She was saying that people wanted
to hurt us. I don’t remember my parents much.
My dad left my mom, and she died from drugs,
86 Irreantum
so Billie Joe takes care of me. I think she sees my
mom’s ghost sometimes, and it scares her bad. I
never seen the ghost, even when I look in her room
at night.”
“Does she do anything to hurt you?”
He seemed surprised by the question and answered
quickly, “She protects me okay. I don’t even have to
go to school. We got cable, and I watch MTV and
sometimes Discovery Channel. I got a couple books.
Now she locks the door whenever she leaves so I
can’t get out and get lost.”
Jonathan was intrigued by Dilon’s innocent accom-
modation of his aunt’s illness. He wished—absently,
transiently—for a day of Dilon’s unstructured life.
As he listened to Dilon, he was gradually distracted
by the sound of hesitant footsteps on gravel. The
tempo increased, and Jonathan looked toward the
noise. Billie Joe was lumbering toward them, gather-
ing momentum as her plump legs churned. Her hair
streamed backwards from a face knotted in nauseat-
ing wrath. She collided with the missionaries as her
voice, guttural and fierce, coalesced into a word.
“Away away away!” She bounced off Jonathan and
threw an arm out, striking Lile’s face. Her flailing
fingertips managed to scratch his cheek, and a ridge
of crimson erupted on the skin. The sight of blood
startled her, and she wrapped her arms around him,
her teeth seeking his neck. Jonathan grabbed her by
the waist, and before he could pull, she twirled and
sprang on him. The slash of her fingernails made
him gasp, and he pushed her away roughly, kinking
her neck. Lile’s hand slipped over her forehead and
pulled her back away, and in the second that she was
attached to neither, they both ran. She howled but
did not pursue them.
J onathan pronounces the words of the baptismal
prayer and bends his knees. Her hand darts
toward her nose to hold the water out, her eyes
glowing with desperate fear, like the red eyes of
a fox in lantern light. Her arms are stiff from her
shoulders to her wrists, as she tries to stare through
her cheeks at the water that will swallow her. Her
chest holds onto a breath long before her head
parts the water’s surface. The pool begins to bury
her tense face, as she bites her teeth to keep from
Irreantum
drowning. The water surges into a wave over the
grimace that keeps the world at bay.
As Jonathan starts to lift her back out of the
chlorinated pool, the font shudders with the force
of her kicking and clawing. He feels her leg strike
his shin and falls onto his knees. The back of his
hand stings as if a horsefly has bitten him, and he
yanks it out of her hand. The chlorinated froth
burns his nostrils as he hunches over, trying to lift
her. Through the turbid water, she extends an arm,
which Jonathan hooks around his neck and stands
up, pushing against the walls with his hands. When
he is stably on his feet, he slips an arm under hers
and stands straight up. Just as suddenly as she
exploded into activity, she collapses, and Jonathan
pushes her limp body against the wall, chest first.
He thumps her spine with the base of his hand
without effect, though in the instant he watches for
a result, he sees that she is breathing, and he feels
her racing heart against his arm. He waits to strike
again, and she coughs a mouthful of water onto
her shirt, a mass of bubbles like the surf. Her head
stands up on her neck as if nothing has happened,
and she pushes past him up the exit stairs. As he
pushes his heavy legs through the column of water,
he sees a faint yellow radiation from his waist. He
pushes his legs harder, to stir up the water and erase
the mark of his fear.
T hat morning Elder Beech, a reliable boy from
an Idaho farming community and Winne-
mucca’s current district leader, had approached
Jonathan sheepishly. In the six months since his
transfer, he has focused on mission leadership more
than proselytizing, though he still feels distant from
the missionaries he supervises.
“Holbrook,” Elder Beech stammered, “I’ve got
some good news. I don’t really know how to say
this, but I’d like to ask you to perform a baptism
today.”
Jonathan had returned his gaze mutely.
He continued, less certain than when he started,
“It’s a baptismal commitment, and I interviewed
her, and she’s worthy, but the elders who taught
her—let’s just say they don’t feel up to exercising
their priesthood today.”
87 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Jonathan didn’t like the thought of disobedience
in his zone but preferred honesty to the unworthy
use of priesthood. “Wouldn’t this be a good chance
to baptize her yourself?”
The district leader looked dejected, and Jona-
than regretted asking. “I don’t feel right about it
either.”
“Is there something in the zone we need to talk
about?”
“No, we’ve got it all under control. It’s just this
week we don’t feel up to it. Plus she’s someone you
taught when you were serving in the Greenough
pad. She even asked for you to do it.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“It’s that lady Billie Joe. She’s really excited to be
baptized.”
“I’m sure she is,” Jonathan mumbled, exhausted
and short of breath, as if he had stepped into a
sauna that was twenty degrees too hot.
The district leader handed Jonathan a white
baptismal jumper and left him standing alone in
the foyer.
W hile Jonathan towels off, his arms tremble
with the aftershocks of adrenalin. He has
managed to calm himself by the time he returns to
the baptistery, where he sits waiting for Billie Joe.
He does not look at anyone else in the room.
When she returns, she is restrained, almost docile,
like a child who has accepted her punishment. She
has the same passive air of accusation his grand-
mother had when he ate the cold food off her plate
after dinner. It is the same face his Uncle Steve
earned for his last audience with his demented
mother. Jonathan does not like this face and looks
at his feet while he points at the confirmation chair,
which Billie Joe occupies.
He suddenly wishes Mormons employed the
symbol of the crucifix. The rigid angularity of the
cross seems to him the only thing that could repair
her soul. He debates raising his hand to the square
again, this time to burn the evil spirit from her,
to make up for the sacrilege of her asphyxiating
bath. With his hands on her head, he searches for
words and can find only the defeated vocalizations
of Father Karras trying to exorcise Linda Blair. He
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
realizes that his dad would have done it right,
would have exorcised her first so the vessel could
be washed clean. He would certainly have done the
exorcism first.
Her hair is still wet, even slippery beneath his
hands. “Willhelmina Josephine Jacobs, by the
authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood—” She
begins to whimper, and he wonders whether God
is fixing his mistake by casting out the spirit regard-
less of the confused stream of words he utters. “We
bless you with health, guidance, and love.” He stops,
unable to complete the ordinance.
He feels her rising up against his hands, push-
ing his arms into his shoulders in a painful, jarring
motion. Before he opens his eyes, he imagines that
the spirit that has possessed her is rising up of its
own accord. He wants that to be true and keeps
his eyes closed until he can feel nothing under his
hands. As he looks up, he sees only a trickle of
water in the beveled window of the door, bearing
testimony of her flight.
Samuel Brown is a physician in Boston, married to
Kate Holbrook, with whom he parents (anxiously)
Amelia Auden Holbrook-Brown. His research interests
are in infectious diseases (though he dabbles in Mormon
history), and his fiction interests are in understanding
deviants and their interactions with the “mainstream.”
His favorite writers are Vladimir Nabokov and Flan-
nery O’Connor, and he is glad that Mormonism is
large enough for experimental fiction. “Meek Shall
Inherit” is based on an actual baptism, and Samuel
still doesn’t know what Jesus would have done.
88 Irreantum
 M e m o i r
Porch Haircut
By Darin Cozzens
I t has been another couple of years since I’ve been
down their lane, yet even now I could drive it
blindfolded. Its sound and feel are recorded in my
nerves: crash of roiled water at the bridge over the
canal drop, ba-bump of railroad tracks, sharp right
turn, half a mile of smooth gravel punctuated only
by the stomach flutter of a culvert hump, sharp
left at the row of pines just east of the house, then
the slowing, the gradual stopping anywhere in the
broad yard.
The arrival itself is recorded in memory, and for
a moment memory is so strong I halfway expect
cousin Melinda or Roger or Sonya to appear and
greet me. If today were a Sunday, in the fall, I
would be here to play football with Richard and
Doug in the bean straw stretching away from the
fuel tank under a cottonwood. If it were a winter
day, we would take skates and a puck and Russian
Olive– limb hockey sticks with just the right crook
(peeled white with a draw-knife) and head to the
canal. To supplement drift wood, we would fill a
gunny sack from the tangle of splintered barn and
corral boards banked against the exterior rock of
the fireplace and carry along a canteen, mess kit,
and Lipton soup or Swiss Miss.
Other seasons, perhaps on windy or rainy days,
we played in the cavernous metal shop built in the
middle of my teenage years. Along with a pipe-
and-plywood basketball standard, the ping-pong
and foosball tables stood on a thirty-five-by-sev-
enty-five-foot concrete floor my uncle and cousins
poured one summer, one mixer batch at a time. On
the banks of an orchard ditch, we had our bicycle
jump. And in the long lambing shed Uncle John
helped build in his teenage years, we kept, in space
shared with branding irons and lariats, several pairs
of scrap-lumber stilts. And somewhere, a dartboard,
small-scale tabletop pool table, card games, comic
books. We were rarely bored.
The shop and fuel tank and cottonwood are all
in place. But I am thirty-eight, and on my arrival
Irreantum
today, a morning in early July, yard and orchard
are quiet. Apart from the latching of the car door,
the only sound is the pleasant sputter of a lawn
sprinkler. All my life I’ve admired my aunt’s lawn,
so thick and green in sagebrush country, such a
durable mat for wrestling, camel fights, mumblety-
peg, goal-line tackles. On summer evenings, it is
a pleasant spot for picnic sitting. No telling how
many watermelon seeds have nourished its sod
since my grandparents lived and worked on this
place between Ralston and Powell.
Half the sprinkler’s flow catches a circular, three-
tiered flowerbed bordered with slabs of sandstone
set on edge. Early in her marriage, my aunt, newly
arrived from New Mexico, designed it to cover the
eyesore of an old cistern. It worked beautifully. It is
rife, as always, with the color and fragrance of petu-
nias, snapdragons, verbena, sedum, alyssum. Across
the driveway, the garden, though smaller these days,
still flourishes—tomatoes, potatoes, squash, carrots.
Out in the long shed, she still keeps a lamb or calf
or two, and somewhere a few laying hens. And then,
of course, there are the six children, my cousins,
grown and gone to marriage and work and decent
lives. Aunt Minnie has a hand for nurturing.
So does my uncle. He was still in high school
when he started farming in the late forties. How
much would a man harvest in the seasons since
then? How many bushels, bales, sacks, pounds,
tons? And even if you could number them, you’d
still miss, as many do, the measure of the man
and the livelihood both. I remember the Polaroid
of Uncle John in a field of sugar corn, reaching
a shovel, blade skyward, to indicate tassel height.
His face bespoke pride, yes, but something else,
too—something like an acknowledgment that this
bounty was as much the corn’s doing as it was his.
One year—one morning of that year—when I
was too young to be much help but was the only
help close enough to summon, he enlisted me to
drive truck for the corn chopper. I was honored; I
was scared witless. The trembling started in the toes
of my clutch foot and crept upward. Braking, gun-
ning, too slow, too fast, corn cud spewing in front
of or behind the mark, I strained amid the racket to
hear his commands, to see, through the silage-specked
89 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
windshield, that hand of his, beckoning and check-
ing, beckoning and checking, until finally I got
the knack of steady speed. It took a long time. But
despite my inexperience and blundering, despite
his own spread-armed, head-shaking disbelief at
the scope and variety of the latter, his intention
was to teach, to help me become able in a new way.
Thus I learned, at his side, sometimes on his lap,
how to drive truck and, later, how to swath and
bale and combine. “There you go!” he yelled above
the clatter of pitmans, plungers, reels, sickles. “That’s
it. You got it.”
As a teacher, Uncle John was neither vague nor
coddling. “No, no, no!” he said when he rode
beside me on my first swather rounds the summer
I was fourteen. “You’re dragging a rock.” Or, “You’re
not taking a full cut.” Or, “You’re running crooked
as a dog’s hind leg.” To remedy heedlessness, he
clamped a hand atop my head and turned it like a
knob so I could see, clearly and without excuse, the
shaggy cut, the missed strip, the uncomely serpen-
tine swath.
Yet no matter how slow my progress, he never
threatened to give up on the lesson. In his com-
pany, I always felt as if I were worth teaching. After
I corrected, compensated, had another go at it, he
said, “That’s it. Now you’re cooking.” More than
once, when my hand yielded to the whims of the
steering wheel or fumbled at a lever, his own hand
reached from wherever he sat and, without words,
enfolded mine. With his touch, with the strength
and sureness of his fingers around my own, I became
sensitive to the nuances of linkage and hydraulics.
I liked the feeling.
F or my visit today, I park away from the house,
in front of Uncle John’s original shop. It is a
squat, open-ended log building, much older than
the lambing shed. As near as I can tell, its furnish-
ings have not changed at all since Doug and I first
practiced bicycle repair at its threshold. Even when
the big metal shop rose to tower over it twenty-
three years ago, its role was not diminished. It still
housed grinder, welder, torch cart, air compressor,
anvil. Its benches continued to sag, as they do now,
under the weight of tools, parts, pieces, oddments.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
The same gear and rigging—come-along, gambrel,
hoses, belts, sprayer pump—hang from the same
high spikes in log walls. One of those walls is tinned
with Wyoming license plates dating back three
quarters of a century.
Admittedly, Uncle John keeps an informal shop.
But, in his case, informality has only enhanced util-
ity. Amid a seeming chaos of twinless hinges, hook-
less chain, maverick nuts and bolts and washers,
buckets of nails, cans of fence staples, clips, keep-
ers, cotter pins, partial spools of wire, cable, cord,
gutted chainsaws, dismantled power tools—amid
all this he could stand right now, muse for moment,
then lay his hand on precisely the end-wrench or
socket needed, on a clevis long buried, on a chuck
key, spare grease gun nozzle, steelyard arm, PTO
adapter. Even a matching hinge.
My uncle has lived by his senses. With his nose
alone, he once concluded that a belt was slipping
on the blind side of the combine—just from a
whiff of friction-burned rubber on the hot breeze.
With his ears, he diagnosed dry bearings, dirty
carburetors, fouled plugs, pitted points. To test the
potency of antifreeze before the first hard frost of
fall, he dipped a finger in the radiator, dabbed a
drop on his tongue. He could open a speckled pod
at the seam and, just from rubbing a still-green
pinto between thumb and finger, tell you how
many days until the field would be ready to cut and
rake. He has always seen the distant fox or deer or
eagle first.
“Tight’s tight,” he said whenever he saw me
straining against a ratchet. His knowledge of that
point between too little and too much stirs a kind
of awe in me. It is the same intuitive alertness that
explains his knack for pouring Prestone in the wind
and actually hitting the radiator opening, for work-
ing a pair of dehorners, for popping corn with no
old maids.
More than anything else, this balance between
under- and overdoing accounts for the influence
of one other very alert sense. “It’s no good,” he
said—of beer drinking, cigarette smoking, snuff
chewing, of theft and vandalism, of profanity and
irreverence, of any one of the thousand faces of
sleazy or cheapened sex. “Stay away from it.” That
90 Irreantum
was the extent of the discourse. But because he had
stayed away from it, through high school, through
three years in the Marine Corps, through five more
years of bachelorhood, I knew such staying away
was possible.
In my mind, I see him combining barley on dead-
hot August afternoons, sleeves and collar buttoned
against the chaff, face and hands white with dust—
windrow after windrow, season after season, enduring
the heat and itch with the calm inscrutability of a mar-
iner, face in the wind. Night after night, he showered,
shaved, slept. Day after day, over a two-month harvest,
he went back to the field. He was just as resolute with
hand chores. Unlike so many in the world, he harbors
no prejudice against picks, pitchforks, shovels, sledge-
hammers. One of my earliest ambitions was to use
tools as ably as he did, to confront work and weather
with vigor like his.
Yet it was no mariner that greeted me the times
I ran through stubble and straw to take him a can
of pop, still cold, or a fudgesicle, still frozen. Each
time, he stopped, throttled down, talked to me as
he drank or ate. He was always grateful in such a
way that I would have run across a thousand acres
to take him another. I wish now that I had.
I
t has been a long time since I have come to Uncle
John for a haircut. With over a thousand miles
between us for the last dozen years, it’s not so easy
as it once was to drop by on a Sunday afternoon
or rainy Tuesday morning. Standing on an utterly
familiar stoop, in front of an utterly familiar storm
door, I knock. Even the sound of my knuckles is
familiar.
“It’s open,” Aunt Minnie says from somewhere
deep in the house—the same response I heard count-
less times as a boy. It has nothing to do with the
door being locked. When she appears in the kitchen
window, she is waving me in. “Hello, stranger,”
she says, smiling. Uncle John is not far behind her.
“Minnie,” he says, “look what the cats drug in.”
The haircut is, of course, only part of the reason
I have come. From the time I first walked the three
miles from my home on the other side of Ralston
to this one, through all the times I got here on
bicycle, then scooter, then motorcycle, I have come
Irreantum
because I feel welcome. And because—next to my
parents—the people responsible for that welcome
have shaped and pointed my life more than any
other people in the world. Today I am glad beyond
words to see them.
“So,” Uncle John says, “you want a haircut?” He
pauses, then qualifies: “You want me to give you a
haircut?”
Yes and yes.
“I haven’t given many haircuts lately,” he says.
“I’m getting kind of shaky.”
He is referring to the effects of diabetes and
sleep apnea (and what is soon to be diagnosed
as Parkinson’s). It’s impossible not to notice such
effects, or those of a heatstroke suffered nine years
ago. Combined, they have aged him considerably.
But perhaps such ailments had to conspire against
my uncle when time alone wasn’t getting the job
done. For this is a man who, in thirty years, had not
aged, not by any of the usual markers. His hairline
had not receded one millimeter. The hair itself was
no thinner, no grayer, and his face, while more
seasoned, was no more weathered. And he certainly
hadn’t in any way “slowed down.” As recently as the
last decade, he didn’t just walk from one place to
another. Depending on destination and urgency,
he hiked, pegged, strode—across furrows and cor-
rugations, over the hoof pocks and hummocks of
swamp pasture, through sagebrush and trees.
Not anymore. Now, even on sidewalks and kitchen
linoleum, he’s mindful of his footholds. His ail-
ments have bent him some, too, which is no mean
feat. Uncle John was—is—a Marine. The habits
of carriage demanded in boot camp have been, in
the half-century since, irrepressible. There was not
a syllable of hypocrisy in his frequent reminders to
stand up straight. Even his chair and pew sitting
bears the stamp of military training: no slouching,
sliding, sprawling, no spineless succumbing to grav-
ity. He never sleeps in church.
The Marine Corps likewise left its mark on his
grooming and dress. My uncle has always kept his
hair trimmed short and his face shaved. I cannot
remember him ever indulging whiskers. At the start
of a workday, he is always buttoned and tucked-in.
On Sundays his dress shoes are shined and tightly
laced.
91 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Early one evening in some after-harvest time of
my boyhood, he and Aunt Minnie came to our
house to meet my parents. The four of them were
going out to dinner. When my uncle came through
the door, the tang of fall came with him, seemed to
radiate from his zip-up sweater-jacket and leather
dress gloves. To one used to seeing him at work
in yellow Handy Andy gloves and hooded sweat-
shirts with knotted and improvised drawstrings,
this moment of leisure was unfamiliar; he looked
splendid and handsome. Taking in the odors of
aftershave, calfskin, and shoe polish, I knew that
this was what a man, standing next to his wife,
was supposed to look and smell like on his way to
celebrate another crop laid by.
U ncle John does his barbering in a little L-
shaped room they have always called the
porch. According to the standards and expectations
of modern house design, it is either misnamed or
amazingly multipurpose: mud room, laundry room,
storage room. Site of haircuts. The bigger section
of the room (the stem of the L) holds the washer,
dryer, sink. Along the wall of the little section are
coat hooks, and in the corner is a lidded boot box
the size of a footlocker and a bootjack within leg’s
reach. Windows on three sides fill this room with
light, have looked out on the weather of many
seasons. Located, as it is, just off the kitchen, it was
always warm in the winter and smelled good—bak-
ing bread on certain weekdays, popcorn and cool-
ing fudge on Sunday afternoons.
Against the narrow stretch of wall opposite the
coat hooks stands what has to be the largest upright
freezer ever made. To understand how Aunt Min-
nie fed six children three times daily, you have only
to look inside. Meat, fruit, vegetables—it’s all there
in polar abundance, wrapped in white freezer paper,
bagged in Ziplocs, sealed in plastic canisters.
As on a hundred occasions earlier in my life,
Uncle John places a counter stool (never a chair)
directly beneath the room’s single light bulb, turns
it, incongruously, toward the freezer door, beckons
me to sit. But I remember. I remember, as I often
didn’t in childhood, to straddle the seat so my chest
rests against the stool back, so I’m looking, not at
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
the blank white of the freezer door, but through the
porch’s main window. Instead of a barber’s cape,
which he has never used, he drapes a frayed towel
over my shoulders, wraps its edge around my neck,
fastens the corners together with his finger and
thumb, snug as a necktie, says, “Hold it there.”
For a moment, his hand and fingers are so close
I can study the blunt-trimmed nails, the texture
of permanent callous, individual hairs and pores.
These are the hands that taught me, twenty-four
summers ago, how to make the square knot con-
necting two spools of baling twine. “You got to
get it tight,” he instructed, pulling until the twine
fibers squeaked, until the knot was no thicker than
a match head, “or it won’t clear the needles.” Unlike
mine, his finger joints and skin were toughened to
the bite of hemp. It was another of my ambitions
to have hands like those.
Now, in characteristic preface to a question, he
spreads those hands, half-closes his eyes, and, with
the merest touch of wryness, endeavors to clarify
my expectations: “Just a regular haircut?”
I know what he’s getting at. Yes, that is what
I want. No negligible trim. No styling, spiking,
blowing, poofing, perming. No spinning straw into
gold. I know my uncle too well to ask that of him
anyway. No, I have come for a shearing, a dethatch-
ing, a real double-stubble haircut.
“Well,” he says, “I can give you one of those.”
Now he sets on the sink counter a German ammu-
nition box (a gift from an older uncle) and folds
back its hinged lid. The box holds comb and scis-
sors, a can of clipper oil, spare cutter heads, and the
clippers themselves—Oster model 22. Early in his
enlistment in the Marines, Uncle John bought them
from a barber at the PX, then taught himself how
to use them. And never, in the almost fifty years
since, never, laboring time and again over the fer-
tile scalps of brothers and neighbors and sons and
nephews, has he charged a dime for his service.
Every step of this process, every intricacy of my
uncle’s movements, is as familiar and predictable to
me as breathing. This is what I am thinking as he
unwinds the cord from around the clippers’ solid
tubular grip and stretches it to length. This is what
I am thinking as he blows dust and lint from the
92 Irreantum
cutters with the same concentrated blast he uses
to blow corrosion from battery posts and filings
from a workbench. Then, reaching high, he plugs
the cord into an outlet built into the socket of the
room’s light bulb.
But on this morning in July, that one oh-so-
familiar motion becomes, quite unpredictably, a
motion of a more profound connection:
Uncle John to his past.
Me to mine.
Me to him.
He flips the toggle on his clippers, and the room
fills with their low hum. “So tell me, Darin,” he
says, clamping a hand on my head and deftly tilt-
ing it to suit the angle of his first strokes, “how’s life
treating you?”
Fine. Thanks in no small part to him and his
faith and good heart and optimism, to his morality
and generosity, it is treating me fine, has treated me
fine for thirty-eight years.
When he’s finished with me today, he will, as
always, take me outside, bid me bend at the waist,
and brush me off one more haircut’s worth onto
Aunt Minnie’s lush lawn. Then, as always, I will
feel air in fresh ways about my ears and, in due
time, after cherishing the rich, quiet hospitality
of this home and these people, will once again go
from them filled and rooted.
Darin Cozzens grew up on a farm in Wyoming. He
has published essays in Journal of American Culture,
BYU Magazine, and Pikeville Review. His short
fiction has appeared in Greensboro Review, Weber
Studies, River Oak Review, and, most recently, Wind-
hover. In 2001, he was selected as one of five finalists
in the Arizona Film Commission’s Annual Screen-
writing Competition, and he has been a finalist for
both the Iowa Short Fiction Awards and Sarabande’s
Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. He lives in
Dobson, North Carolina, where he teaches at Surry
Community College.
Irreantum
S t o r y
Seriously
By Katherine Woodbury
C ea liked her parents, but they were altogether
too much for her most of the time.
Brod, entering the hall that evening, bellowed,
“You should have seen his face. When I picked up
my head, you should have seen how he looked. I
scared shit out of him.”
Fevr laughed. “Oh, Brod, he won’t come.”
“But Fevr, he’s an honorable man, this Gawain.
A good soldier. He promised.” Brod’s tone betrayed
what he thought of such honor: human honor.
Brod despised humans—the Saxons, the Britons,
the Picts—and Fevr loved to hear him despise them,
although now and again she would say, “But Brod,
don’t be unkind,” and they would laugh and laugh.
Cea didn’t mind, didn’t mind her parents being
fay, didn’t mind not being fay herself since she
wasn’t their child, just the human orphan they
cared for, and she didn’t mind that most of the
time. Just didn’t want to be involved, didn’t want
to scare shit out of anyone.
As Brod had done to some Briton soldier in the
south country. Brod liked to visit human dwellings,
great halls presided over by warlords, men claiming
to be kings. He would arrive during feasts, dare the
assembly, “I will allow one of you to strike me with
my axe. If I survive the blow, you will let me return
the favor.”
There was always one fool of a soldier eager to
prove his strength. Up with Brod’s axe, off with
Brod’s head, and then Brod would scoop up his
head while the soldier turned white with fear and
shock. The head, dangling from Brod’s hand,
would speak: “Come in one month to the Green
Chapel in Cumbria in the north. There you will
receive a similar stroke.”
None of the soldiers ever came. Brod had been
playing his game as long as Cea could remember,
longer than she had been alive, and she knew no
one would ever come.
93 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “This one,” Brod insisted, “is different. A hero
amongst his people. One of so-called King Artos’s
men.”
“I’d like a visitor,” Fevr said, “especially a hand-
some, young soldier.”
“I didn’t say he was handsome.”
“Honorable soldiers always are, Brod.”
“Honorable soldiers aren’t susceptible to seduc-
tive wives.”
“Aren’t they? I think I could induce some lustful
fumbling,” and she and Brod laughed until they
couldn’t speak.
Cea escaped outside, tramped across the rough,
dark earth. She pushed into the wind, stooping to
pick up firewood.
I wouldn’t come. I wouldn’t take the challenge in
the first place.
If the soldier did come, he would stop at their
hall. Theirs was the only fort close to the Green
Chapel, the only decent fort for miles on the south
side of the Roman wall.
He won’t come. Brod knows that. He takes pleasure
in proving it.
Brod was in the courtyard when Cea returned
that evening, and he was greeting a Briton soldier.
Brod was in human guise—a big man with a red
beard—and Cea paused to watch.
“Welcome, welcome,” Brod said, the hearty,
good-natured host: Brod’s favorite role. “Gawain,
you say. Welcome, Gawain, to our humble abode.”
Gawain, a young man of Brod’s height but slim-
mer, smiled broadly.
“Many thanks,” he said. “It would give me great
pleasure to rest here before I complete my quest.”
Pompous fool. Cea trudged into the hall to tell
Fevr.
Fevr swept to meet Gawain, hands out—“A visi-
tor. How lovely”—while Gawain gaped.
Fevr is beautiful, Cea reminded herself. She sighed
and wished Fevr wouldn’t introduce her, but Fevr
would; she thought Cea was pretty, she thought
Cea needed more confidence, she was proud of Cea
even if Cea wasn’t proud of herself.
“This is my daughter.”
Cea glared, Fevr frowned at Cea, and Gawain
blinked nervously.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Fevr said, “We love visitors, especially ones of
such importance. What is your quest?”
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” Gawain said, startling
Brod, who spilled his drink down his beard.
“How exciting,” Fevr said to cover Brod’s guffaw.
“Not one eensy-weensy detail?”
“Only,” Gawain said, “I need to find the Green
Chapel. I have to be there in three days time.”
Brod recovered. “The Green Chapel is less than
a day’s journey from here. Why not stay with us till
then?”
Poor ninny. He didn’t deserve Cea’s parents for
three days, no matter how ridiculous his quest.
“You are most kind,” Gawain said and beamed
around the table.
He swaggered off to bed, whistling. A few min-
utes later, Fevr followed.
She’ll seduce him. He’ll look the fool twice over
when Brod doesn’t kill him and Fevr discards him.
Cea didn’t want to hear about it. So humans
were stupid, and the human girl who had borne
Cea and deposited her absent-mindedly in Fevr
and Brod’s hall had been as stupid: a witless idiot
who had been raped, probably, by a soldier like
this one, probably. A soldier who bragged about his
virtue and honor. Cea knew humans were like that.
She didn’t want to hear about it.
She woke early, planning to slip out before Brod
and Fevr were up, but they were whispering together
over the hearth. Fevr waved an impatient hand.
“Oh, Cea, you won’t believe it—I got one kiss
from him, most chaste. The rest of the time, he
told me how unworthy he was of my love. I’m seri-
ous, Brod. He’s a fool, but he’s a genuine fool.”
Brod slapped his chair arm, belly convulsing
with chuckles.
“He told me my beauty was too radiant to bear.
Honestly, Brod, don’t laugh. Or you, Cea.”
Cea grinned and went outside.
She searched for old berries and nuts in the fields
outside the fort. She had her tunic muddy all over
and her hands red with cold when Gawain knelt
beside her and began to rub her hands quickly
between his.
“I can warm them myself,” she said.
He released her, smiling at nothing. Idiot.
94 Irreantum
 He said, “Have you heard any tales about that
place?”
They were on the edge of the hill that over-
looked the Green Chapel’s hollow.
Cea shrugged.
Gawain sat, hands around knees, and it came
to her, of a sudden, that if he were genuine, he
believed he would die in two days. She glanced
sideways at his face.
Not a fool’s face, not at the moment. Rather
grim, those level eyes surveying the ground below.
She said, “It’s a fay place,” hoping for a reaction.
Nothing. She continued to dig.
He said, “Has your family ever fought them, liv-
ing so close?”
“Why?”
“You might know of weapons or curses, ways to
stop them.”
She sat back on her heels.
“Is that your quest?”
He didn’t answer. “Depends which one,” he finally
said, eyes empty of emotion.
She pushed the earth into small, neat piles, auto-
matically ordering disorder. How human, Fevr would
say.
Gawain took her hands again.
“You’re cold.”
She said, “The fay don’t harm—”
“Don’t they?”
“Tricks, disappearances, wagers—nothing serious.”
“Tricks can hurt.”
She let him warm her hands and carry the berries
she’d foraged. “What did the fay ever do to you?” she
said, but they entered the courtyard, and he didn’t
answer.
T en years before, fay had kidnapped Gawain’s
brothers. A fairy transported Modred and
Geraint to a crumbling stone castle beside the sea.
“If you try to leave,” the fairy threatened Modred,
the elder of the two, “the castle will collapse. It will
crush you.”
Modred had stayed, and he had kept the tod-
dler, Geraint, from straying. Three days amongst
the damp stones, until Gawain found them. Even
now, autumn evenings evoked for Gawain the same
terrified nausea he had felt during those days, and
Irreantum
with the nausea, memories of stumbling through
swamps, following dancing lights, calling until his
voice was a frayed thread of entreaty.
“We can’t leave,” Modred had said when Gawain
found them. He clutched Gawain’s wrist, pale-
faced and wild-eyed. “The castle will kill us. The
fairy said.”
“You can’t stay.”
He’d forced them to leave, hustling Modred
through the gate, Geraint slung over his shoulder,
and the castle hadn’t collapsed.
Fay lie. Fay joke. That’s the harm fay do.
He’d brought his brothers home, but—
I lost them. Geraint trusts nothing, wakes at night
from dreams. Modred—Modred has no faith, not in
himself, not in me.
Modred led a patrol squad of which Geraint was
a member. Gawain was one of Artos’s lieutenants,
very much the elder brother, the outsider.
Impossible to find the responsible fairy now. Fay
have no leaders, no connections.
Gawain hated them all, indiscriminately. He had
taken the green fairy’s challenge at the feast, relishing
the chance to strike, not caring for the consequences.
Of course he didn’t win. One hoped. And tried.
Fay have no rules. Neither do I. Smile, behave as
others expect, and kill.
He smiled, he lavished gratitude upon his host
and hostess, endured Fevr’s cooing and teasing.
What a house. Where the mother tried to seduce
the guests, and the daughter spent her days avoid-
ing the family.
Cea had the look Geraint had had for years after
the kidnapping: a panicked edge. Geraint was stable
now, was sane, but Gawain dreaded that Geraint
would slip away like Modred into an uncommuni-
cative, untouchable void.
“Stupid” was all Modred said when he heard
about the challenge.
Modred’s squad had been on patrol during
the feast. Modred stood at the door to the junior
barracks, stamping his feet free of snow. Behind
him, amongst the cots and stacked weapons, boys
tussled and joked.
Geraint watched Gawain and Modred from the
darkness of the door, arms folded. Galahad, the boy-
priest, leaned beside him.
95 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Geraint said, “You won’t go,” tense with noncha-
lance.
“I’d go if I thought I could kill it.”
Modred considered. “Not worth the effort,” he
said and slid into the barracks, yelling for quiet.
Geraint slipped after him, but the boy-priest Gala-
had stayed.
He said to Gawain, “You hate the fay?”
“I have good reason. So does Modred.”
“Perhaps.”
“You, of course, love all things, even fay.”
“I haven’t been required to love the fay. If I met
one, yes, I suppose I would try to love it.” It was
a long speech for Galahad. “Baptize it,” he added
after a pause, “which is an act of love.”
Galahad was an average soldier, but Modred had
never requested a replacement. Modred, Gawain
suspected, needed Galahad: his talisman, his believer
in something.
Galahad said, “Revenge, you’re thinking?”
“Better than doing nothing,” Gawain said, and
Galahad frowned, his eyes on the line of fortifica-
tions that surrounded the hill.
“It’s like nothing,” he said in the slow, friction-
less voice that eased the men who heard it, even
if the hearing was rare, “to do things for the mere
existence of them.” He paused, chewing on his lip,
and then: “Intangibles take more—courage. Less self-
absorption. The things we touch—are never enough.”
“I don’t want much,” Gawain said.
Galahad studied him, gray eyes like metal discs.
“You won’t go north?”
“No,” Gawain said and knew he lied.
Modred’s squad departed the next day on patrol.
Four days before they would return, Gawain rode
away from Artos’s fort to Cumbria to find the
Green Chapel.
Kill one of the fay, bring its head home, give my
brothers that prize.
Not too much to ask.
“Ithink,” Cea told Brod that night, after Gawain
was stowed in the guest chamber, “he isn’t going
to let you strike him. I think he’s going to fight.”
“And I thought he was a man of honor.”
“He’s frightened, Brod,” Fevr said.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Cea did not say what she thought: that Gawain
wasn’t afraid, that he wanted a death.
“I’ll ease the boy’s mind,” Fevr said. “I’ll give
him my girdle. I’ll tell him it’s magic, tell him if he
wears it, no creature can wound him.”
“Oh, Fevr,” Brod hooted, but Cea said, “Please,
be careful.”
“Careful, Cea? Your mother’s girdle is no more
protection than your own, sweetheart. What can
the boy fight me with but his silly human weapons
and his silly human fists?”
“He could hurt you.”
“Then I’ll kill him.” Brod shrugged as Fevr glided
off toward the guest chamber, her hands loosening
the fabric around her waist.
Cea went to her room. She curled on her bedding.
Humans were fools, Fevr had taught her, and she
had no reason to doubt Fevr’s perception. Humans
believed in unseen things—principles, virtues, and
gods. Humans set for themselves unfathomable
standards. Honorable soldiers went on drudging,
pointless quests. Desperate men groped for weapons
against the indestructible.
“Cea.”
Gawain slipped through the curtain to her cham-
ber. She sat up, narrowing her eyes. If he thought
she was like Fevr, that she wanted to be, she’d tell
Brod to swipe him for good.
He held out Fevr’s girdle.
“Your mother says this is magic.”
She nodded numbly, hating him because she’d
never had to lie before, hating her parents because
she’d never had to protect them before.
He pulled the girdle through his hands.
“It’s your mother’s,” he said.
Your mother’s.
“I thought,” he said, “yours might be magic, too.”
She didn’t argue, she didn’t care if she lied. She
fetched her girdle and helped him tie it on under
his shirt. He was a fool, and Brod would make him
look a worse fool, but he was genuine, he was honest,
he didn’t want to wear a married woman’s girdle.
Gawain and Brod hunted the next day. They
returned toward evening with partridges and a brace
of rabbits. Gawain avoided Fevr. He smiled at Cea,
but she couldn’t approach him, wary of herself.
96 Irreantum
 He won’t hurt Brod. Brod won’t hurt him. Brod is
all bluster, waving arms and loud words.
Panic woke her before dawn, dream images of
Gawain dead, Brod bleeding, Fevr screaming curses.
She ran down the stone-chilled corridor to Gawain’s
chamber. It was empty.
“He left,” said the watchman. “Said thanks for
our hospitality, hopes to see us again.” The man
chuckled. “Doubt that’ll happen.”
He strode on his rounds, and Cea ran out of the
gate into the gray mist.
She heard a horse stamping and called. She ran
into a chest. Hands touched her shoulders, her
cheek—“Cea”—and wanted to stay there, in that
warm, enclosed space.
She backed away.
“Don’t fight,” she pleaded. “He won’t hurt you.”
“They do,” hoarsely. “They will.”
“No, please. Just finish your quest and go. You’ll
be safe. I promise.”
His hand brushed her arm. She could feel his
questions. She sobbed and turned and ran back to
the fort.
“Cea.”
Gawain stared into the darkness, heard no
answer.
He walked the horse forward, feeling the road
with his feet. It would split soon. The left-hand
path, Brod had told him, would lead him to the
valley and the Green Chapel’s hollow.
He was ready to fight. He had Cea’s girdle. He
didn’t know if it was magic, but he suspected her
mother’s wasn’t, and he’d rather wear Cea’s.
He had wanted to speak to her the night before,
but he had stayed in his chamber, watched the dark
sky ease to gray.
I don’t want another person to cower from me.
Ahead of Gawain on the road, streaks of light
brushed the horizon. Sunlight sparkled on the
bare-limbed trees. A few flakes of snow fluttered
past Gawain’s face. The road twisted downward.
He reached a stream and then a copse of trees. The
road plunged, and there was the Green Chapel.
Not a manmade chapel—not one of Galahad’s
sort—but a green mound in the middle of a green
Irreantum
hollow, green even in winter, the mound split by
a waterfall. Gawain left the horse by the trees and
descended.
“Hullo.”
The water splashed into echoes. Gawain pulled
his sword and dagger from his belt.
(“Don’t fight. He won’t hurt you.”)
I need my brothers back, Cea, the heart of them,
Galahad’s intangibles lost to a fairy’s lie.
(“Just finish your quest and go—”)
They keep themselves at arm’s length. They look to
each other, never to me. They blame me for not com-
ing sooner.
(“You’ll be safe, I promise.”)
Worthless, elder brother.
Gawain put a hand to his face, felt the sword hilt
impress his cheek.
I slept while they were kidnapped. I got lost during
the search. I came late.
“Welcome.”
The green fairy stood on the path above. Descend-
ing into the hollow, he strode to the top of the
mound.
“Your arrival is well-timed. Are you ready to
receive your stroke?”
Gawain released the sword and dagger. They
splashed in the waterfall’s pool. He bent his neck,
waited.
The axe whistled down. Nicked his neck.
Just a joke, just a joke, just a joke.
“I would have missed completely,” the green
fairy said, “but I thought you deserved a scratch for
taking my wife’s girdle. Naughty boy.”
And the green fairy dwindled into his host—
Brod, red-bearded and laughing.
(Don’t fight. You’ll be safe, I promise.)
“You’re wearing it now, aren’t you?” He heaved
with guffaws.
Gawain picked up his weapons.
“Oh, come now, don’t be sore. We’ll go back to
the fort. You can stay another week.”
“No.”
Not even Cea was truly on his side. Did he expect
she would be? Could he ask it of any of them?
Brod frowned. “Look, man, I’m not angry. You’re
not hurt—”
97 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Gawain unwound the girdle, dropped it to the
ground.
Brod chuckled. “My wife wants you to keep it.”
“It’s your daughter’s,” Gawain said and saw
uncertainty flick across Brod’s face.
Gawain stepped away, then stepped back, bent,
and picked the girdle up. She’d given it to him, and
Brod hadn’t known. Gawain could be glad of that
much.
He had reached the trees when Brod said, “Hey!”
and started up the bank.
Gawain clambered onto his horse.
Brod shouted, “What did you do to Cea?”
“I asked.”
“She would never have agreed.” Brod reached
for Gawain’s knee. “She would never help a stupid
soldier boy.”
Gawain kicked the horse’s sides. He galloped away
from the trees, over the stream to the main road.
He turned the horse’s head south and pressed in
his heels desperately.
He hadn’t considered Cea’s safety when he threw
down the girdle, had thought only of his own bit-
terness, his intense loneliness.
Stupid. Fool man.
He thundered down the road.
T he soldiers arrived with the sunrise. Cea was
fixing the livestock hutches, trying not to
think of Gawain or his meeting with Brod or her
warning, which hadn’t been a betrayal but felt so
much like one.
The leader of the soldiers, stocky and dark-haired,
slid off his horse and strode to the steward.
“I’m looking for my brother.” His voice was
quiet, yet curled about with so much dark inten-
tion that Cea shivered.
A second, lighter-haired man—boy—said, “We’re
looking for Gawain,” and whirled as a horse trotted
into the courtyard.
Cea braced herself, expecting Brod’s hearty, “You
should have seen his face,” but the man on the horse
was alone, and it was Gawain.
He rode toward her, dismounting before the horse
had stopped.
“Cea,” he said, face pale, his voice frantic, and
then he saw the three young men and gaped.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
The dark-haired leader, in that flat voice, said,
“We’ve been traveling up here since we got off patrol.
I never thought you’d do anything this stupid.”
“That wasn’t any reason not—” Gawain twisted
toward Cea. “My brothers, Modred, Geraint.”
They looked at her unsmilingly, the eyes of the
younger fierce, the eyes of the older empty and
cold.
“Galahad,” Gawain said, waving a hand toward
the third soldier, a priest, and a faint, uneasy plea-
sure stirred Cea’s heart.
A Christian. A holy man. One of theirs.
“You said you wouldn’t come,” Geraint said to
Gawain. “You told me, you told Galahad—”
“I can’t—I’m not going to argue with you, not
now. Cea”—Gawain spun back to her—“Cea, come
with us. You can trust us. Please, Cea. Your father’s
angry.”
Modred’s eyes fixed on her face. Beyond them,
she saw Brod, in human guise, stride through the
gate. He spotted Gawain and swerved, shouting, “I
want some answers, soldier-boy.”
Drawing his sword, Modred fixed himself between
Gawain and Brod.
Fevr hurried from the hall.
“Don’t annoy me,” Brod snapped at Modred.
“I’m going to talk to Cea.”
Modred jerked his head, and she too had a pro-
tector—Geraint at her shoulder, sword ready.
Brod roared into fairy shape, huge and green
with wide-open mouth.
Geraint gasped, a sound like a whimper that
brought Gawain’s head round.
“Is he the one kidnapped you?” Gawain said.
“Yes,” Modred said.
No. Cea closed her eyes. I don’t want to know.
The fay do harm.
Gawain flung himself at Brod.
“No,” said Fevr.
“No,” said Modred, his shoulder against Gawain’s.
“No, you can’t win.”
“I should have killed him before. Ten years ago.
I ought to have found him and killed him then.”
He glared over Fevr’s head at a perplexed Brod.
“Trapped them in a castle,” Gawain shouted.
“Threatened them, told him”—his hand on the back
of Modred’s neck—“it would collapse if they left.”
98 Irreantum
 Brod dwindled to human form and hooted.
“That? That was just some fun.”
Gawain surged forward. Again Modred stopped
him, his arm across Gawain’s chest. Geraint on
Gawain’s other side said hoarsely, “Don’t fight him,
Gawain.”
“Forget it,” Modred said. “I have. Geraint has.”
“Have you?” Gawain turned, stared down into
Modred’s face. “Where are you then, if you’ve for-
gotten? I lost you—I never really got you back.”
The winter breeze drifted across the courtyard,
ruffling Gawain’s dark hair, brushing the shadows
on Modred’s face.
Modred said gently, so gently his voice mingled
with the breeze, “I’m here. I’m here now.”
Geraint’s voice grumbled into the silence. “Which
is more than we could say about you when we got
off patrol.”
And Modred grinned. Mockery glinted from
behind the opaqueness of his eyes.
Gawain’s muscles eased. He bowed his head, and
his eyes slid toward Cea.
“Cea—?”
Brod bellowed, “Don’t speak to her. You tell
me”—his finger aimed at Gawain—“why she gave
you her girdle. What did you do to her?”
Fevr, her voice unrecognizable, said, “You forced
her?”
“No,” Cea said, her eyes meeting Brod’s. He
didn’t scare her.
“I gave it to him,” she said. “He asked.”
Fevr giggled. “Oh, Cea, why didn’t you tell me?
I’d have let you seduce him.”
“It isn’t wonderful,” Brod snapped. “Did you
seduce him?” His voice was almost pleading.
“No,” Cea said. “I’m going with them.” Her voice
didn’t waver any more than her eyes.
Except now Fevr frowned, saying, “Are you?”
Her voice was sweet and tight and forbidding.
“Don’t be fools,” she said to Modred and Gawain,
standing in her way with swords drawn. “I’m not
giving Cea over to some sordid, human romance.”
She rustled forward but then stopped abruptly,
spotting Galahad.
“Brod.”
“What? Oh, Fevr, he’s just some Christian boy.”
“Some is too much.”
Irreantum
Fevr, Cea thought, has always seen things sharper
than Brod. She’s never been satisfied with just the joke.
She would have seduced Gawain. She would have
swung the axe clean through. I’m more like her than I
thought.
Fevr and Galahad faced each other.
We’re spectators, trying to manage in the dark,
to cope while the Fevrs and the Galahads face each
other, the Fevrs all for themselves and the Galahads
for belief, for faith, for God, in this case.
Galahad said nothing, undaunted by Fevr’s sugar
smile and bright teeth.
“Spend a night with me, Christian boy?”
It was not a true challenge. Fevr was marking her
ground, that was all.
“No,” Galahad said. “Will you let me baptize you?”
“Brat,” Fevr said without rancor. “The things I
could do to you—”
“If I allowed—”
“I have no regard for your God’s ‘free-will.’ I do
not respect it.”
A hint of wryness: “In that, at least, you have no
choice.”
Fevr snarled.
Galahad grimaced, his eyes straying to the fort.
Fevr spread her fingers across Galahad’s cheek. He
flushed, dark pupils dilating in their gray settings.
His gaze steadied on Fevr’s face.
“Perilous,” Fevr said, “grasping for invisibles—
uncertainties.”
“Yes,” Galahad said. His mouth twisted. He
paused, and Fevr waited, eyebrows raised. “Like
fairy games,” Galahad said, and Fevr snorted.
“Just games. Nothing more than games. Can
you separate the real from the game?”
“I don’t know,” Galahad said, and Cea heard the
yet.
Cea moved away from her protectors to stand
beside Galahad. “I’m going with them,” she said.
“You can’t stop me, Mama.”
“No,” Fevr said, softening. “I didn’t raise you to
be stopped.”
Thank you, Cea wanted to say, but Fevr would
not want thanks.
She stroked Cea’s face, then she said, “Come,
Brod,” and walked away, not beaten, not contemp-
tuous, no longer interested, no longer involved.
99 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “But—”
“Cea’s decided. They’re hers, her kind. Come,”
and he followed docilely, bemused, looking back
once.
Gawain released a shaky breath. He smiled at
Cea, his eyes wary but pleased.
Modred’s level voice said, “Can we go now?
Unless you want Galahad to exorcize the place?”
Gawain shook his head. He sheathed his sword.
Cea said, “What happened at the Green Cha-
pel?”
“Nothing.” Gawain fingered his neck where a
red slash showed above the shirt. “He made me
look a fool, that’s all.”
The words fell heavily amongst them until Ger-
aint said, “Gawain didn’t tell us about you.”
“He didn’t know,” Cea said.
“I wouldn’t have minded him going,” Geraint
said, “if it was to rescue you,” and Cea heard mis-
chief in the guarded voice.
Galahad made a soft sound of amusement.
She looked at the soldiers who surrounded her.
Her kind, Fevr had said, and she trembled at the
implications. Modred’s opaque gaze was as demand-
ing in its way as Galahad’s gray-eyed serenity. She
stepped closer to Gawain, touched the blood at his
neck.
Geraint said, “And seeing it’s your girdle—”
“Geraint,” Modred said sharply, and Geraint
subsided, but Cea saw Modred wink—surely saw
Modred wink—and Gawain saw it and flushed.
“Just a joke,” he said, his cheek against her hair.
And laughed.
Katherine Woodbury is a fantasy/science-fiction writer
with an interest in fairy and folk tales. She is an
alumna of BYU, where she won first place in the
Mayhew Short Story Contest (specialty division, 1992)
for a story based on the Arthurian legend. In addi-
tion to IRREANTUM, Katherine has been published
in Space & Time, Dark Regions, Marion Zimmer
Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and Cicada. A fantasy
story of Katherine’s will appear in April in BYU’s
Leading Edge. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 100
I n t e r v i e w
Susan Elizabeth Howe
Interviewed by Douglas Talley
Editor’s note: This interview is reprinted by permis-
sion of Meridian Magazine (www.ldsmag.com).
© 2003 Meridian Magazine.
S usan Elizabeth Howe teaches creative writing
at Brigham Young University. Her poems have
appeared in The New Yorker, Southwest Review,
Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and other journals.
Her book, Stone Spirits, was published by the Charles
Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU. The follow-
ing Meridian Magazine interview of Professor Howe
examines several recurring themes in the book and her
views about the art of poetry.
O ne of the intriguing elements in a number
of the poems in Stone Spirits is your sense
of the vast stretch of time and how it can be
compressed into the present.
From “Things in the Night Sky”:
We are surrounded by ancient light
We can’t see, come millions of years
Through space we can’t recite.
From “The Paleontologist with an Ear Infection”:
How can a cry heard one hundred
And thirty-five million years be old?
From “Lessons of Erosion”:
To hike to the spires, you climb
Over two hundred million years,
Language and breath your sacrifice.
What is your interest in capturing time in this
manner, on such a grand, geologic scale? Are you
suggesting the “eternal moment” is simply a com-
pilation of innumerable years, or something else?
My initial reasons for writing about these vast
reaches of time is that when I was exploring the
three subjects of these poems—the galaxies in
the universe, a dinosaur, and the southern Utah
Irreantum
landscape—I felt the need to try to grasp those
immense distances of time and space. And, indeed,
I do feel that they can help us understand the dif-
ference between our perspective and God’s perspec-
tive. If the creation of the Earth took four billion
years, and humans have been here for only about
ten thousand of those years, we can scarcely com-
prehend the processes of the creation, much less of
the eternities. I think we have a tendency to reduce
God’s power and thought to our own levels, and I
think we ought to be a lot more humble than that,
aware of the immense difference between God’s
knowledge and our own.
Lines like these suggest that poetry can almost
effortlessly transform the human perspective
into a godlike perspective, as for example when
William Blake wrote:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Do you believe poetry has an inherent power
not just to inform our sense of the divine per-
spective but to actually grant us that perspec-
tive on occasion? Do you think it can actually
transform us into a more divine nature? Why,
or why not?
I suppose it is possible, if a poet is both in tune
with God and gifted with language, to convey God’s
perspective in a poem. Whether such a perspec-
tive is received or not will also depend on the
spiritual condition of the reader. But I think most
poetry, including my own, has much more modest
aims. The impetus for my poems is almost always
an attempt to understand why an experience or
image or story I have heard has impressed itself
so forcefully on my mind—what does it mean to
me? And because what makes our lives meaningful
is associated with our beliefs, I hope that what I
believe—basically, Mormon doctrines—informs
my poems in some way. But I would never claim to
be able to assume a divine perspective in my poems;
I’m much too mortal and limited for that.
Another delightful element in your work is
your sense of the comic. It’s readily evident even
Irreantum 101
in the titles of some of the poems, such as “The
Paleontologist with an Ear Infection” and “In
the Cemetery, Studying Embryos.” The idea
seems irresistible in your work that the comic
perspective is also rather godlike, that there is a
gentle omniscient presence looking down upon
human affairs and, on occasion, chuckling. Is
this intended, or is it reading too much into
the poems? What sense of humor, if any, do you
attribute to God?
Yes, I believe that God has a sense of humor
because humor is associated with happiness and
also provides us with a means of coping with
grief and distress. So I see humor as good, and I
believe that all good qualities originate with God.
But again, I don’t think that I have the capacity to
convey God’s sense of humor, just my own. “In the
Cemetery, Studying Embryos” is about resurrection,
and it tickles me that many readers have seen that.
But to think of mortal remains as embryonic in
the sense that they are waiting for another birth
was just an idea that came to me while I was sitting
in a cemetery one day. It certainly arises from my
beliefs, but I don’t know that I feel comfortable
attributing it to God. I don’t really feel qualified to
speak for God.
You also allow, quite sympathetically, for the
tragic, as evident in your bittersweet elegy, “To
My Brother in His Casket.” How did the writ-
ing of that poem help you deal with your loss?
Can poetry help us reconcile the tragic?
My friend Peter Makuck, the editor of Tar River
Poetry, taught me that poetry can be healing to
someone who is trying to deal with loss or injury.
To write about pain—what has caused it, how it
feels—can help the writer release that pain, and
readers who have suffered the same or similar
experiences are comforted in reading the poems
and learning that their own feelings are shared by
others. One of the greatest poems to show a pas-
sage through grief to eventual resolution and peace
is Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.” My twenty-year-old
brother was killed on his mission in an automobile
accident. His death was one of the most difficult
losses of my life to reconcile and accept. I hope that
my poem is something of a memorial to him. I hope
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
it expresses my love for him and my huge sense of
loss at his death.
Early drafts are
almost never very good,
but they usually have
the seeds of what can
become a better poem.
The opening section of poems in Stone Spirits
is titled “The world is hard, not of your mak-
ing,” a line taken from the poem “Archangel.”
A number of the poems describe a physical
world which is harsh, where “more ruin waits
for weather,” as stated in the poem “Lessons of
Erosion.” How do you reconcile your faith with
the harshness of the physical world?
It is not just the physical world that is harsh.
Humans suffer horrendous trials; I don’t know
anyone who hasn’t been through terrible pain,
physical or emotional or both. I hope that in my
poems the harshness of the physical world suggests
the harshness of what we sometimes suffer. But if
I understand the purpose of life, real high-stakes
struggles are necessary or we won’t ever grow mor-
ally or spiritually. God has honored us with agency
so that we can actually become more godlike;
Christ has made it possible for us to repent when
we mess up, so that we can try again.
A previous Meridian column published one
of your finest poems, “Mary Keeps All These
Things,” and the response of Meridian’s reader-
ship was quite favorable. One reader printed
out the poem and inserted it into her scriptures
between pages 1274 and 1275 of Luke 2. Tell us
about the inspiration for that poem and how it
developed.
One Christmas season it occurred to me that the
person most involved in Christ’s birth, in addition
to him, was his mother, and yet we have no account
of the experience from her perspective. So I tried to
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 102
imagine what the whole long event was like for her
and let her speak in her own voice.
What directed you toward poetry in the first
place? Were there defining moments in your life
when you knew you wanted to be a poet? What-
ever possessed you to pursue this “finikin” art,
as Wallace Stevens put it?
I wrote poetry in high school and my early col-
lege years, but just for myself—I had received no
training, not even in high school English classes. In
college, I majored in Spanish and minored in French,
and then after graduating I immediately realized
that I’d majored in the wrong subjects (though
they have been useful in teaching me how language
works, as well as some of the relationships between
English and other Romance languages). So I didn’t
begin to train in poetry until my master’s and doc-
toral programs. Then I took several poetry writing
classes even though I thought I would primarily be
a fiction writer and a dramatist. One of the major
forces in my development as a poet was a friend in
my doctoral program, George Bilgere. He is a very
fine poet, and for about a year we had a pact that
we would write a new poem and exchange it every
week. That constant writing helped me learn the
discipline of poetry. What finally turned me to poetry
as my primary art form was that I began publish-
ing poems in literary journals before I even had any
stories ready to send out. That was a clue to me
that I was a better poet than fiction writer.
How would you describe your principal liter-
ary influences? What authors do you return to,
and why?
Anyone who wants to be a poet should con-
stantly be reading poetry, and so I read a great
deal. I try to read the current volume of The Best
American Poetry each year, and I subscribe to two
or three literary journals where I am trying to place
poems. This means I am exposed to many contem-
porary poets, and, when I encounter one whose
work I admire, I buy that poet’s collections and
read in depth, trying to look at everything from
subject matter to rhetorical strategies to figurative
language. I often copy individual poems into a note-
book, because I think such writing helps me observe
the individual words and the lines more thoroughly.
Irreantum
I memorize a few new poems each year so that I
will have them in my head. Some of the poets I
have read in depth include Mark Jarman, Chase
Twichell, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Elizabeth
Bishop, May Swenson, Mary Oliver, and Maxine
Kumin. A couple of years ago, I found a remark-
able new poet named Morrie Creech. I recommend
all these poets very highly; they are a joy to read.
Tell us about your writing habits. Do you
work at it every day? Do you have a particular
schedule or discipline to stay at the work, even
when it’s not going well? Do you have any tricks
for working through the blocks?
I wish I could write every day, but during the
semester I have to devote most of my time to
teaching, so I usually write only two or three days
a week. I eagerly await summer and semester breaks
because then I have more time. It is hard for me to
settle in and start writing, so I always read poems
for about half an hour at the beginning of a writing
session. This moves me over into my more creative
self as well as giving me models of several fine poems
in my head. I write first drafts by hand on the back
of scratch paper. This lowers the stakes for me. “It’s
just scratch paper,” I say. “It doesn’t matter if what
I write isn’t very good.” Early drafts are almost never
very good, but they usually have the seeds of what
can become a better poem. I always have more ideas
for poems than I’m able to get to; I try to work on
about five poems in each session, and then I come
back to those poems until I haven’t found things to
revise in about four readings. I wouldn’t dream of
sending anything out to be published until I had
taken it to my poetry group and responded to their
suggestions.
How has your work as a teacher of creative
writing helped shape your own poetry?
I try to assign exercises that give my students
a new imaginative space from which to write a
poem, and, as often as I can, I also complete those
exercises. They have led to some of my best poems,
especially in the last few years.
What value do you see in the workshop
approach to creative writing promoted by col-
leges and universities? Are workshops a good
idea?
Irreantum
I’ve found that I can’t just turn beginning writers
loose in a workshop, because they are not critical
readers; they themselves don’t recognize the differ-
ence between a strong line and a weak line, vague
imagery and specific sensory imagery, and so forth.
So I don’t use workshops in introductory classes.
But in intermediate and advanced classes, work-
shops are invaluable. By the end of the semester,
students are able to find other writers whose work
they respect, and they often form writing groups
with these other class members. Workshops are
helpful to me because if a student hears that sev-
eral other readers don’t understand a line or an
image, she is much more likely to accept my own
criticism of the problem. The main difficulty with
workshops is that they can lead to poems that all
sound alike; students have to be warned not to try
to rewrite another student’s poem but to let him
know what its strengths and weaknesses are on the
writer’s own terms.
Do you believe in a Mormon school of poetry,
like the Augustans or the Pre-Raphaelites? Do
you want to see a body of art that is distinctly
Mormon?
In my mind, the question you ask is a question
of audience: should there be a body of art cre-
ated for a Mormon audience (using language and
symbols and references that only those within the
culture will understand), or should Mormon artists
consider the larger culture as the audience for their
art? I think that our culture is mature enough to
support art for both audiences and that the artist’s
talent and interests will suggest the audience she
should create for. Both can be subsumed under the
category of Mormon art. But standards of crafts-
manship should be high regardless of audience and
regardless of medium. I am encouraged by the excel-
lence I see developing in Mormon art in so many
different mediums: drama, film, the novel, visual
art, and music, as well as poetry. It seems to me that
in many ways our culture is coming of age and that
many very talented Mormons are using their gifts
to bless our culture and the larger American culture
as well.
In summary, tell us how your faith has influ-
enced your poetry and your approach to your
work.
103 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 The very perceptive questions you have posed
in this interview point out how my faith has influ-
enced my poetry. The specific subject matter of my
poems is not usually religious, but my perspective
on my subject is often the result of my faith. Flan-
nery O’Connor said that her definition of Catholic
art was the Catholic mind working on any subject.
That is a definition that I apply to Mormon poetry:
a Mormon mind working on any subject.
What advice do you have for the aspiring
Mormon writer?
I’ve pretty much already given it: read all the
time, read a variety of contemporary poets, give
yourself permission to write bad early drafts and
then work on them, and get yourself a writing
group with other poets whose criticism you respect.
One more thing: you have to send your work
out to literary journals and keep it out until it is
accepted. No one will ever come to you and beg
you to let them publish your poems; that’s just not
how the system works.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 104
I n t e r v i e w
Linda Paulson Adams
L inda Paulson Adams lives in Jackson County,
Missouri, with her husband of fifteen years, six
children from ages thirteen to two, two cats, and a
dog. In 1999 she got a real computer, went online,
found AML-List, and realized she was not alone in
her writing goals—there were other Mormon moms
with young children out there writing and publishing.
Cornerstone published her first novel, Prodigal Jour-
ney, in July 2000 as the first book in a series about the
last days, for which she received Cornerstone’s Fiction
Book of the Year Award, outselling all but one title.
Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in several
magazines, including IRREANTUM, Meridian Maga-
zine, and Lynx Eye. Linda spoke at the AML’s writers
conference in November 2002.
When Cornerstone suffered bankruptcy in 2002,
Linda had to start all over, searching for a new pub-
lisher to continue the series. Fans write every week to
ask when the next volume will appear. She finally has
good news: Through online networking, she and twelve
other established LDS authors have formed LDSto-
rymakers, Inc., a publishing cooperative. Their first
book, Publishing Secrets, a guide for helping new
authors through the LDS publication maze, will be
released April 1. The second book on their docket is
the long-awaited book two of Linda’s series, Refining
Fire, which will be out this summer. For more about
LDStorymakers, see www.ldstorymakers.com. Linda’s
website is www.alyssastory.com.
L et’s begin with how you came to writing in
general, and to Mormon writing. Who were
your teachers?
I’ve wanted to write since I was very small. I
remember writing long paragraphs for my grade
school teachers and stapling together blank pages
to make my own “books.” I’ve always been fasci-
nated by the English language. I even like diagram-
ming sentences. All my English teachers told me
I should be a writer—which is what I’ve always
wanted to do, so that’s good news. I wrote my first
Irreantum
short story in my early teens, a pathetic science fic-
tion piece titled “The Planet.”
My BYU English professors blend together into
a conglomerate in my memory (for which I express
my deep apologies), except for one marvelous poetry
professor whose name I can’t recall for the life of me
(he was stout, white-haired, and frustrated by the
quantity of advertising majors taking the class), as
well as Darrell Spencer. He was terrific. I doubt he
remembers me, but he helped my writing improve
so much. I was truly the Simon Cowell of that class,
though. This is probably a good place to apolo-
gize—I was a merciless reviewer. I hope I’m kinder
now. My poetry professor taught me that a rough
draft, no matter how inspired, is never sacred. I took
that lesson to heart and never forgot it. Revise!
I also learn from reading, reading, reading. Gifted
writers teach so much by example. Poor writers also
teach by example—what not to do.
You have a large family of small children. How
and when do you find the time to write? Are you
able to keep a consistent schedule and routine?
Who and what is your inspiration, if you have
one?
I have six children ages thirteen and under, and
that’s a handful, true. People shake their heads
and wonder how I do it. So do I. But I love work-
ing on something that stays done so much more
than scrubbing fingerprints that reappear the next
day—shoot, the next hour. It gives me something
fulfilling to look forward to. My husband Steve is
my number-one fan, which helps immeasurably. I
couldn’t do it without him. We both realize I am a
happier person when I’m writing. Sometimes he’ll
tell me: “Go—write.”
I suffer from a type-B personality, and I don’t
enjoy schedules and lists. I’m learning to keep to
a schedule, one with built-in flexibility. Now that
I feel . . . able to succeed, I set aside more writing
time with less guilt—although it’s my husband who
has to remind me that art is not about commercial
success, it’s about the creation. The act of doing
matters more than where it goes afterward. That
type of guilt is pointless.
I’m not a morning person, so afternoons or nights
after the kids go to bed are more productive times
Irreantum 105
for me. I keep notebooks lying around for random-
firing ideas. You can’t plan those, and if I don’t
write it down immediately, it’s gone. Daytime is
loaded with interruptions, sure. But housework,
actually, is good thinking time. There’s a motiva-
tion for sorting socks, huh? I have two adventurous
toddlers underfoot, and I’m not producing as much
as I’d like at the moment. But that’s all right too.
They’re adorable and fun, and they won’t be this
age forever. I always keep in mind that my greater
work is my family: working on my marriage, rais-
ing my children well. I can’t afford to lose sight of
that. Because if my family fails, it doesn’t matter
how many books I write or how well acclaimed
they might become.
Kristen Randle and Rachel Nunes are a great
inspiration to me. They’re doing it, so I know it
can be done. Kristen helped me understand that
it’s all right if I’m not one hundred percent satis-
fied by the roles of wife and mother alone. I used
to worry about that. Rachel is a real go-getter. She
started the LDStorymakers e-mail group I became
a part of, and so much has grown out of that now.
Plus we have the same number of children—so if
she can do it, I can too.
What kinds of things do you read?
I love to discover new authors. For me, a book
has to be accessible, clear, and well written, with
characters I care about. I’m a big fan of Scott Card,
but my taste ranges everywhere, from Dickens and
Tolkien to Anne Tyler and Toni Morrison, Timothy
Zahn, Anne McCaffrey, and Madeleine L’Engle.
Do other cultural influences besides fiction—
such as music—play into your creativity?
Yes. I often have on music of some kind while
I write, which can set the mood of the piece I’m
working on. My taste in music ranges all over the
scale, from Mozart to Styx and U2 to Patsy Cline
to hymns to Sandi Patty. It depends on my mood.
Which do you prefer writing, short stories or
novels?
Actually, my first love is poetry. When I have
the greatest need to express myself emotionally, my
writing comes out as a poem. Short stories are less
of a headache to plot. But novels allow for greater
character development and exploration. I’ve tried
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
writing drama, but my plays haven’t been pro-
duced. I enjoy all of it.
Do you have any rituals or conditions for a
good writing session?
It’s tempting to give a quirky answer here, but
no. Not really. If I’m stuck with writer’s block, a
drive in the car—alone, at night, with the stereo
cranked way up—will often do me good. Quiet
really, really helps. But in my house, that’s not a
frequent option. I adapt.
Let’s talk about your first novel, Prodigal
Journey. How long did it take you to write it,
and how did the story develop?
I posted a lengthy article to AML-List about
that once, but the short answer is seven years. The
first draft of the sequel took a year and a half, with
nine of those months spent pregnant, and I expect
the third will only take a few months or so. It gets
easier. Prodigal Journey took so long because at that
point it was a hobby—I wrote a chapter here and
there, not knowing if it would ever see the light of
day. Sometimes I felt guilty for writing at all, as if
it was some kind of subversive activity. I didn’t like
talking about it with anyone but my husband. I felt
weird. Alone. And I had no idea if it was any good.
The story itself developed out of one scene,
the chapter titled “The Stranger” in which Alyssa What resources would you recommend to
is healed. I wrote that soon after my third child readers interested in apocalyptic studies and
was born. Then I had to find out who Alyssa was, speculation?
where she was going, how she reached that point in Nearly everyone with a book on the subject has a
her life. And it’s still growing. different opinion. Some books are old enough that
Why did you choose to write a Mormon apoca- their ideas are mildly humorous in light of where
lyptic series? What resources did you use in specu- we are now. For example, the Cold War with the
lating on the apocalyptic events in your novel? U.S.S.R. didn’t result in World War III after all.
In some ways, I feel the story chose me. But in Many people thought it would.
all honesty, I’ve wanted to read an LDS last-days I firmly recommend sticking to the scriptures,
series that took my breath away ever since I was a only well-documented prophecies, and the guid-
youth, and I never found one. I wrote the kind of ance of the Spirit. The more I study, the more I
book I wanted to read myself. avoid speculation. I’m perfectly happy to wait and
I study mainly scripture to glean my ideas, but see. The real key is to be spiritually prepared and
I also use every resource I can find to research the not fret so much over the details. Some of the less-
topic and read every doctrinal work I can get my documented tidbits make for great fiction, but I
hands on. Evangelical doctrine carries a much more wouldn’t plan my food storage around them. You
strict interpretation of the book of Revelation, know? That said, a nice little primer is Behold, I
which I also have to be familiar with. I use all this Come Quickly by Hoyt W. Brewster (Deseret Book,
information to figure out what I can use in the plot 1994). It debunks a lot of the myths out there
and what I can’t. about who said what.

Winter 2003/Spring 2004 106 Irreantum

 Do you consider your timeline and major
events to be authentic, meaning doctrinal?
If any of the speculation in Prodigal Journey
actually came to pass, it would give me the serious
creepy-crawlies. I keep the doctrine of the church
straight where it is mentioned. But the timeline is
completely fictional. My hope is to set readers’ minds
forward, thinking and planning for the future,
because we don’t know what will happen or when,
and it’s spiritual preparation that really matters. My
goal has never been to create a picture of what it’s
really going to be like. But it needs to be believable
and to tell a good story within that framework.
I think that’s where some apocalyptic novels fall
flat—too many things going on in a work of fiction
for no apparent reason, except that “X event belongs
here.” I work to make conflicts arise from plausible
events. Yet I based the entire series on a premise
that isn’t founded on canonized prophecy.
What premise is that?
There is a popular Mormon idea that Missouri
will be “cleared out” before we build the temple in
Independence and that the Saints will return en masse
to build Zion. It could happen that way, sure, but
there is no basis for it in scripture or prophetic
statements. The idea stems from a statement Joseph
Smith allegedly made to Alexander Doniphan that
Doniphan would see the day when Missouri was
left desolate, which did happen during the rav-
ages of the Civil War. However, the concept of a
disaster that leaves buildings intact and no animal
life remaining lends itself to an interesting story
line. What could create that kind of desolation in
the Midwest? The series hinges on my imagination
of how that could happen: a fictitious, genetically
engineered disease.
Have LDS readers responded to your work
positively? Negatively? What kinds of things do
you hear back in person or by mail?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive.
I have a fan base anxiously waiting for the next vol-
ume. They tell me that they couldn’t put the book
down, that they stayed up until wee hours of the
morning, that although it’s five hundred pages it reads
very fast. My favorite comment was that my book
was “right up there with To Kill A Mockingbird.” I
Irreantum 107
won’t say it’s that good. But I have heard only one
or two negative comments in the almost four years
since it was published. On the Deseret Book web-
site, one woman said she found it depressing and
her teen wasn’t going to read it because “she’s a nice
girl.” She’s entitled; parts of it are depressing. But I
do wonder if she actually finished the book or got
stuck in the middle.
Are there people you would steer away from
reading your fiction?
People of the same mind as that particular sister
should probably not read it. Parts of it include drug
abuse, and some of the characters are naughty, bad
examples of human behavior.
Do you know of any non-LDS readers? How
do they respond?
Yes. Quite a few of my non-LDS friends have
read it, and they enjoy it just as well as members
of the church. They don’t have any problems with
the concepts or Mormonness inherent within it. It’s
not overbearing. It doesn’t proselytize.
How do you balance portraying things realis-
tically versus idealistically? What about poten-
tially explicit things like sex and violence and
the drug use scenes in the novel?
Once upon a time I was an idealist. Every pass-
ing year, realism sinks in deeper, and I believe it
shows in my fiction. When it comes to content—
sex, violence, language, drugs—I’m not afraid to be
honest when I have to be, but today’s media does
tend to throw a lot of it in gratuitously. It’s a fine
line to tread. In my opinion, it’s rarely necessary to
include every detail of a sexual encounter or violent
scene. I side with Hitchcock’s philosophy—it’s more
powerful to leave it to the imagination. I try to
include only the details that I believe are critical to
the story.
Most fiction is a combination of three elements:
what the author has experienced, observed, and
imagined. How do those three elements work
together for you? How much is autobiographical?
For me, imagination and observation play a much
larger role than direct experience, especially in this
series. I’ve joked that I’m not into “method writ-
ing.” While writing what you know is important,
knowledge doesn’t have to stem from personal
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
experience. Some readers believe I’m Alyssa. I
am not. Alyssa is not a real person! Her family is
certainly not my own, and I can honestly say that
keeping the Word of Wisdom has never been the
slightest challenge for me, not unless you’re count-
ing chocolate cake. I have dear friends who have
recovered from all types of substance abuse, and
I mined their experiences to make Alyssa’s more
realistic. Readers who come from seriously dys-
functional families tell me I pegged that just right,
which is gratifying because there is a degree of
extrapolation and imagination going on there.
Sometimes a short story or poem begins with
a real event or situation, but imagination quickly
takes over and gives the piece a life of its own. Very
few actual elements remain by the time I’m done. I
keep my autobiography to my journals, and it’s not
nearly as interesting.
Prodigal Journey is long, and one critique
is that some parts drag on a bit. What kind of
editorial process did the book go through? How
much of the original material was cut?
As a new author, I was pleased with the editorial
process, because I wasn’t asked to cut very much.
Looking back, I see that it could have been a lot
tighter. My editor was a stickler for point-of-view
violations, and we cleared those up. We tried to
catch all the typos but didn’t. It’s a learning process.
I now realize I can cut ten percent, sometimes thirty,
of anything I write without losing too much of the
narrative thread. I’ve started combing through the
manuscript to find those slow parts and clean them
up, in case it’s ever reprinted. I’m never satisfied.
You seem to focus a lot on non-Mormon char-
acters and their miraculous experiences. What
do you think about the common cultural Mor-
mon assumption that Mormons will be the only
recipients of divine intervention in the last days?
I believe that assumption is wrong. The saving
ordinances available only to Latter-day Saints are
vital and not to be downplayed. But God loves all
His children and intervenes in each life according
to each person’s faith. I have non-Mormon friends
who work harder than I do on a daily basis to
maintain their spirituality, and I’m not exactly a
slacker. That’s humbling. I don’t see how such a
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 108
person will be less blessed before and during the
Millennium than we are.
You gave Christ a speaking role in a science
fiction story. Some readers would consider that
to be making light of holy things (or beings).
What was your thought process in making that
decision?
The chapter in which Jesus appears was the
first chapter written. The rest centers around that
one pivotal experience—the book would not exist
without it. It is in no way intended to make light
of the sacred. My intent was to show the absolutely
personal relationship each one of us can have with
Jesus Christ and that he really is a living, resur-
rected being who knows each one of us personally,
by name, and is committed to helping us through
our trials.
It was difficult to pull off, though. The scene is
a literal deus ex machina, which could be a literary
mistake, yet it’s the central focus of the book. Every
single reader in the pre-publication stage had a dif-
ferent opinion on how that scene should play out.
But no one wanted it removed, either. I tried very
hard to keep this portrayal in line with my (lim-
ited) understanding. What would he say and do in
this situation? It was the most rewritten scene in
the entire book, I can tell you that. But take it out
entirely? No.
This book seems to take a narrow view of
governments and the innate goodness of the
majority of people—a theme that seems to recur
in many novels that speculate on end-times sce-
narios. How does this reconcile with the rapidly
increasing acceptance we see of the gospel world-
wide and the commonly accepted idea that the
best have been saved for last?
Hmm. I did take a narrow view of government,
true, to fit the purposes of plot development. But
even with “the best saved for last” and the gospel
filling the earth, President Hinckley has stated in
conference that the current positive media focus on
us will not last. In addition, I’ve drawn from many
scriptures that say “the hearts of men will wax cold”
and become “past feeling.” Already much in our
society is focused on self-gratification; good is called
evil and evil good. It’s a pattern I’m somewhat
Irreantum
obligated to use in this series. But actually, I do
believe in the innate goodness of people every-
where. I meet wonderful people all the time.
In light of Cornerstone’s demise, what’s the
future of this series? When will the next volume
be released, and by whom?
Everyone’s favorite question. I finally have an
answer! LDStorymakers, Inc. was formed in Janu-
ary 2004, in part due to my fruitless struggle to
find an LDS publisher willing to take on a book
in mid-series, as well as having a group of authors
who wanted to pitch in our chances together. (As
a co-op, we are not in competition with other
publishers for authors or manuscripts. We will be
printing only our own works that readers say they
want but were not previously picked up by other
houses.) We are currently in the editorial process
with Refining Fire, the sequel to Prodigal Journey,
and it should go to press by June. The series title of
Thy Kingdom Come will most likely be dropped.
Can you give us any information about the
sequels?
Do Peter and Alyssa get together? Whatever
happened to Phil Richardson? What happened to
Margret and her kids after they left Alyssa? Those
questions and more will be answered. Trust me. I
think you’ll like it. The next book sets a fast pace
and is also much shorter. The third book, Zion Ris-
ing, should complete the trilogy. It’s fully outlined
and partly written at this point. I intend to wrap it
up neatly and not go on into unending volumes.
What have you learned about marketing your-
self as a writer and approaching different pub-
lishers? What is your best advice for aspiring
fiction writers?
I’ve learned I still have a lot to learn, especially
when it comes to book promotion and marketing.
You need to do everything you can to promote
yourself. I’m shy about telling people I’m an author,
and I’m not a natural salesman. I work to get over
that. It doesn’t hurt to ask, and the worst anyone
can say is no. I had a welcome surprise with our
local library system (Missouri, generally non-LDS
readers). They bought one evaluation copy when I
asked them to take my book. After several months,
they called to say they wanted it—and purchased
Irreantum 109
fifteen copies! Also, if I travel where there is an
LDS bookstore, I call ahead and arrange a signing.
Most bookstores are happy to do that. Promoting a
book can take as much imagination and creativity
as writing one, but it’s worth the effort. If the first
book doesn’t sell, your next may never come.
I love setting down
the first draft
of a new story and
not knowing myself
where it’s going to go.
It’s vital to learn everything you can about the
business aspect of a writing career and be sure you
understand everything you’re ever asked to sign.
When approaching publishers, be prepared for rejec-
tion. Don’t take it personally when it happens. Make
sure that what you offered them is the type of work
they publish; you need to match up to be accepted.
My best advice is to remember two things about
editors. One, they are just people doing their jobs.
Be professional and courteous, especially when talk-
ing or writing to an editor you don’t know person-
ally. If an editor rejects your work, that means it
didn’t fit her personal taste. Try another until you
find a good fit, someone who likes your writing.
Two, listen to them. I’ve seen many fledgling writ-
ers—and I used to be one—who only get upset
when they are asked to make changes to their
Perfect Text. Editors are professionals. More often
than not, they do know what they’re talking about.
If you’re told your dialogue is unrealistic or the first
half of the story drags, it probably needs to be fixed.
Fix it. Nothing you write is too sacred to rework.
What else have you written? Do you have any
previous publications?
Until Prodigal Journey, I wrote only short fiction
and poetry. I published my first poem in 1999. Since
then I’ve had a few short stories published and a
number of poems, some appearing in Irreantum.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
I’ve been published in Buffalo Bones, Limestone
Circle, Friction, Meridian Magazine, and Lynx Eye.
Some of this work can be read on my website.
What is your greatest fear as a writer? What is
your greatest pleasure?
My greatest fear—you’ll laugh, here—is that
some wing-nuts will take this series and form a cult,
believing the events portrayed will shortly come to
pass. That would seriously freak me out. I also fear
quitting. Not finishing something I started.
My greatest pleasure . . . the honest truth is, I
love setting down the first draft of a new story and
not knowing myself where it’s going to go. That’s a
rush.
You said on AML-List once that you had
always “wanted to do something” for LDS lit-
erature. What is it that you’re trying to do? What
boundaries are you trying to push?
The only real boundaries I want to push are
increasing writing quality and getting people to
read more. Whether I’m doing that or not is for
others to decide. I want to write books that not
only keep people turning pages but also enrich and
inspire them to live better lives. I’m not at all inter-
ested in pushing readers to accept more of anything
they personally find distasteful. If some find my
work above their tolerance level, so be it, but I’m
not out to intentionally disturb anyone.
Do you have comments about the new Mor-
mon cinema movement? Any interest in seeing
your stories on screen?
I’m thrilled to see it happen, and I’m a big fan of
Richard Dutcher—that’s no secret. I’d love to see
Prodigal Journey made into a movie, sure. But to do
it right would take a big budget—the special effects
won’t be cheap—and the right people producing
and directing, who are or who at least understand
Latter-day Saints. I don’t want it done poorly. I can
wait.
What will it take to get Mormon characters
and themes before a national audience? What
kinds of stories, characters, plots? People love
reading about Asians, Jews, Catholics—why not
Mormons more often?
The problem may lie in our church-wide focus
on spreading the gospel, which I wouldn’t want to
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 110
change. Still, people outside the church are so aware
of it that Mormons are automatically suspect:
“When’s the subliminal join-the-church message
coming?” Stories with universal appeal should work,
where the LDS characters are accessible and human.
It seems we often either paint ourselves as too per-
fect, where every problem works out like a fairytale,
or else authors disenchanted with the church focus
on bringing out any and all warts and flaws.
Dutcher’s Brigham City was a near-perfect exam-
ple of finding that happy medium. It portrayed
Mormons as who and what we are, flawed but try-
ing to be good people doing the right thing. That
resonates universally.
Have you read much by Mormon authors
or published by Mormon presses? What’s your
impression of the Mormon reading audience?
I read as much as I can, but I’m under the same
limitations many members outside Utah are: on a
budget and without access to Mormon fiction in
local library systems. Kristen Randle and Orson
Scott Card are my favorites. Once I figure out
interlibrary loan, I’ll get more caught up.
To me, there seem to be two audiences. LDS
publishers are tapped into a paying readership of
mainly romance readers who want their books
light and squeaky clean, which is fine. The major-
ity of LDS fiction serves this readership. But I
believe there’s an untapped Mormon audience out
there who reads a good deal of science fiction and
mainstream novels and don’t currently look to LDS
bookstores to find the fiction they read.
What projects do you have on your plate
now?
Publishing Secrets just went to press, to which I
contributed and for which I did a fair percentage
of the editing and proofreading. My main project
now is getting Refining Fire finally in print. That
will keep me busy through early summer, and I
plan to attend the Latter-day Saint Booksellers
Association convention in August to help promote
its release. I plan to complete a draft of two new
books this year. One will be the third in the series,
and the second is still undecided, but I have an
offer to write an inspirational true story, and I might
do that. I’m seeking an agent, hoping the Prodigal
Irreantum
Journey series might get picked up nationally. And
I’m always submitting short fiction and poetry to
magazines.
What new directions do you see your writing
taking in the future? Do you anticipate trying
out any different styles or genres?
My dream is to become an author for the national
market. That’s some distance away. Along the way,
I don’t want to get squeezed into a narrow mold
or an image of my work out of which it’s difficult
to break. I want to do and try everything. I’m fas-
cinated by the theater and movies, and I hope to
write successfully for both someday.
As long as I have breath, I’ll be writing something.
Irreantum 111
N o v e l
E x c e r p t
Refining Fire
By Linda Paulson Adams
A uthor’s Note: “Easy Money” is currently the first
chapter of Refining Fire, sequel to Prodigal
Journey. Margret DeVray, a single mother of two, left
Alyssa near the end of the first volume. Her psychotic
ex-husband had discovered her whereabouts and she
had to escape, fast.
At this point in time and unbeknown to Margret,
the outbreak of a genetically engineered virus-bacteria
has just occurred, affecting all the citizens of Central
City, a giant metropolis in the Midwest. Symptoms
begin with severe coughing and nausea and end in
unavoidable death.
Chapter 1: Easy Money
M argret DeVray was out of money. A crumpled
scrap of paper in Alyssa’s handwriting lay in
her pocket, with the name of some town still too
far away, where friends might be, and shelter. Alyssa’s
cash had gotten them as far as West Des Moines.
Ralph, at least, was far behind. She breathed easier.
She stooped to foraging out of dumpsters behind
restaurants at night. After a single failed attempt
at prostitution, she discarded that idea. It was a
strange world where a woman could sell her body
for any product or price, but snitching apples for
her babies would send her to prison.
She told her kids, The restaurants gave us the
leftovers; aren’t they nice? Neither Marcus nor Natty
complained. Much of it was barely touched: bread,
salads, even fruit. Too impure for rich tastes, it fed
them well. Cold salmon in beurre blanc at 7:00 am
wasn’t so bad.
One night the trash pickup came before she did;
the dumpsters were all empty. Their bellies were
empty the next day at lunchtime. She walked the
kids to a large grocery store.
“Here’s the plan. We go in and put stuff in the
cart like we’re shopping, eh? You follow?”
Marcus nodded.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “We’ll snack as we go. I’ll say we’re paying for it
on the way out. Then we duck into the bathroom,
ditch the cart, and leave.”
“But Mama, that’s stealing,” Marcus said.
Like she hoped he wouldn’t figure that out. “I
know.”
“You taught us never to steal.”
“I know that too. Marcus, baby, this is an emer-
gency. I don’t have any money left or any job, and
it’s the best I can do today. Just this once, it will be
okay.”
Marcus thought long. Turmoil brewed in his
amber eyes. My sweet baby—he’d rather starve than
do wrong. But Natty, only four, whined in her ear.
“What happened to the restaurant people?”
Marcus asked.
“They didn’t have any leftovers today.” That
was true, in a way. “It won’t look like stealing,” she
added.
“There’s no money at all?”
“None. Baby sister can’t go hungry, Marcus.”
He looked at Natty. “I can’t think of anything
else, either.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Good boy.” She hated tarnishing his natural
goodness.
On their way in, a security guard asked for ID as
she put Natty in the cart.
“Yeah, I got ID. What’s it to you?” Margret asked.
“Sorry, ma’am, you look—may I see it, please?”
“Excuse me? I don’t look like I can shop here?
I’ve had a hard day, all right, Godzilla? I work
graveyard, then come home and clean house before
I go to my other job. My man don’t do squat, and
I don’t get much sleep. I don’t need this routine
every time I come in here. This is your last warn-
ing, hear?”
“But I’ve never seen you before.” He furrowed
his brow, a single, furry line wandering across his
forehead.
“And you work every shift?” She had to look way
up. He was big; she surprised herself to be taking
this on.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You look sick is all.”
Her Hispanic accent came thick. “Listen, I am
way too tired to put up with this crap. Sorry if I
look so bad to you.”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 112
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t like how you called
me Godzilla. Your ID, please?”
“It’s buried in my hand, idiot. This one.” She
held up her right hand, middle finger extended,
and moved past before he forced the issue.
“He wasn’t nice,” Marcus said.
“He’s prejudiced because we’re Mexican. Remem-
ber that.”
“I thought we were black.”
“We’re both. He’s still prejudiced.”
“I want an orange.” Natty leaned out. “Over
there, Mama.”
Margret mumbled to Marcus, “Follow my lead.
Don’t stuff yourselves. Watch me.” Her mouth
watered as she piled oranges into a produce bag.
The scent clung to her fingertips.
Margret compared canned goods as if checking
for sales. They accepted the tidbit samples employ-
ees handed out, and Margret put packages of the
samples she liked in her cart, making every effort
to be polite and gracious. She was painfully aware
how bedraggled and smelly they were.
Marcus held up gourmet cookies. “Can I have
these?”
“Not this time. We’ll get these instead.” She
grabbed a cheaper store brand and tossed it in the
cart.
“Can I have one now?” he asked, hopeful.
“Go ahead.”
Soon the cart was full of discreetly opened pack-
ages of prepared food, mingled with produce and
meats; it looked normal enough. She didn’t fuss
when Natty whined. Nobody messed with them,
whether in spite of or because of their ratty appear-
ance she didn’t know.
Natty announced, “I have to go potty, Mama!”
“Is your tummy full, honey?” Margret whispered.
“I hafta go,” Natty said, bouncing in the cart.
“Come on, Marcus. Time’s up.”
The restroom was in the back. She left the cart,
and they went in. “Come with me, Marcus.”
“I’m too big for the girls’ room, Mama.”
It was unlike him to complain, and she hadn’t
expected that to be an issue. Her whisper was
harsh. “I’m sorry, but you gotta go with us. I can’t
risk losing you!”
Irreantum
 “Okay.” He stared at his feet.
She washed their hair, faces, and hands in the
sink. She had grabbed a brush; she should have
added a pair of scissors. Their hair was more mat-
ted than she realized, and she could have cut it all
off.
Natty had fun standing under the automatic
dryer, giggling.
Margret crossed herself, grateful they were undis-
turbed. They went out. With Natty on her hip,
holding Marcus’s hand, she turned down a differ-
ent aisle toward the exit.
“Miss?”
Sunshine beckoned through the plate-glass doors.
She squinted.
“Miss?” the voice repeated.
Surely he couldn’t mean her. But it was more
natural to look back than to plow on ahead. She
turned. There was a man, pushing her cart. Car-
amba! Her cart. Her eyes went wide in horror. That
was it: opened packages and all. She stopped short
and held her breath.
“Yeah?”
“Did you forget this?” He had a warm, friendly
smile.
She trembled. Marcus squeezed her hand, both
their knuckles going white.
“No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie; they hadn’t forgot-
ten. “I needed a certain brand of rice, and they
don’t have it here. Do you mind not getting into
my business?”
He persisted. “I’m almost positive I saw you with
this cart. I noticed you back in produce.”
“You noticed me back in produce.” It occurred
to her that maybe he was single. But she was an
unlikely pickup choice, ratty and stinking and
dragging two kids. “Tell me what you really want,
and I’ll see what I can do, buddy. Do you work
here?” Maybe he was plainclothes—even worse.
“No, no, I don’t work for—Listen. I don’t know
how to say this, but I can help,” he whispered.
“Help with what?” She kept a guarded eye.
His voice stayed at a whisper. “You can take all
this home. I mean it.”
“What makes you think I want it?” She tossed
back her curls.
Irreantum 113
“I saw you eating, back there . . . the children . . .”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry, I thought maybe . . .”
“Wait,” Margret said, hoping he was for real and
not an undercover cop fooling her into confessing
theft. “Don’t go. We could work something out.”
She looked him over. Back to plan A. Or C. What-
ever that once-failed idea was. He wasn’t muy good-
looking, but not bad. Even on ordinary non-financial
terms he might do. She shifted Natty on her hip.
“We can discuss arrangements,” she smiled.
“Great! Let me take this through the line for
you.”
“No, we’ll never eat it all.”
“Your kids are much too thin. Take it.”
T hey rolled the loaded cart out into the parking
lot. “Where’s your car?” he asked.
Margret laughed. “My car. Right. Look at me!
What planet are you from?”
He smiled. “Bus, then?”
They headed for the stop at the far end of the
parking lot.
“But this is the long-distance line to Sioux City . . . ?”
“I know,” Margret said. “So what’s your name?”
“John. And yours?”
“Margarita Juarez.” Marcus tugged on her shirt.
She waved him off with a shh.
“That’s a pretty name,” John said.
They reached the stop. Margret seated Marcus
with his sister and fished out the cookies. “Eat.
Watch your sister. Natty, be good.” She kissed her
daughter on the chin. “I’m going to talk to John
some more, all right?”
She caught John by the hand and pulled him
out of earshot. “Now, about those arrangements.”
She forced a smile. “You’ll get more than you paid
for—I’m very good, eh. And that food’s worth a lot
to me. Anything you like, you got it.”
“Excuse me?”
“What you see is what you get.” She tilted her
head, showed off her body. “Does your car have
tinted windows? Or I’ll go with you wherever—
your place, a hotel, just so my kids don’t know, eh.
And the deal’s off if you want the kids.” She had to
be clear; that was what had made her first attempt
go sour.
“Wait—you think I want sex for this?”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 “Buddy, nobody hands out that much money.”
She folded her arms. “What else do I have to pay
with? Nada.”
“You’re not paying me back, and definitely not
that way.”
She was half-insulted. “Why, are you gay?”
He was flustered. “Margarita, that’s not my way
any more than it is yours.”
“You think I don’t want to, is that it?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Then what is your point?” she asked.
He paused. “You don’t have a home, do you?”
“What do you care?”
“Tell me the truth. Please,” John said.
Margret sighed. “We’re traveling.”
“Where? And with what means?”
“I don’t owe you answers about my personal life,
mister.”
“That bus is coming in a few minutes, and you’re
not getting on, are you? You don’t have anywhere to
go or any money to get there.”
“I do too,” she retorted. “I’m extremely grateful,
but we were doing fine without you. If you don’t
want to trade, fine. But don’t bug me about my life,
eh? I don’t owe you that. Take my offer, or leave me
alone.”
To her surprise and shame, he pulled out his wal-
let and handed her several bills, shoving the money
into her hand.
“I’m not taking any more of your money unless
I work. I’m a seamstress. I can do lots of stuff,
mending, laundry, gardening. Anything.” She tried
handing the money back, but, torn by need, her
hand wouldn’t budge.
“Just get your kids to safety, Margarita,” he said,
closing his hands around hers. “Promise me.”
“Sure, I promise.”
“Hurry. You do that, call it working for me, and
we’re even.” His broad smile returned, with straight,
white teeth. He walked away, back through the
parking lot.
She looked closer; the bills weren’t twenties, they
were hundreds. She gasped. “John—wait!”
But she didn’t run after him to see if he’d made
a mistake. She shoved the money in her jeans pocket
and hurried back to her kids. No sense arguing
with fate.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 114
“What were you fighting about?” Marcus asked.
“We weren’t fighting. He gave us bus money.
Want to ride the bus?”
“Yeah!” Natty brightened up.
“See, baby, we didn’t have to steal after all!”
“I knew it would be okay,” Marcus said, his eyes
misty.
“What do we do with all this food?” She looked
through her bags, nervous laughter escaping her
lips.
“Eat it!” Natty squealed and clapped her hands.
“Yes, sweetie, we’ll eat it!” Margret hugged her
daughter.
In her effort to seem like a normal shopper, she’d
thrown a lot of food in the cart that she couldn’t
use. Plus, ten heavy sacks of groceries were too
much to carry. If she had only understood, she’d
have gone back and picked different stuff. Raw
roast beef. Rice, potatoes, onions. Tin cans—and
no can opener. Stupida.
She separated the things she couldn’t cook, carry,
or eat raw from the practical stuff and kept six bags.
If only she hadn’t rushed. She was grateful but
kicked herself for not doing better.
Well. It got them out of town with money left
over, even though bus fare wasn’t cheap. Their legs
could use the break. And they could eat a real din-
ner that evening.
The bus west to Sioux City came up with a
whoosh and a squeal of brakes, and they climbed
aboard.
A s they traveled, a passenger had a coughing fit.
The bus stopped. The man was forcibly hauled
off by other passengers and left at the side of the
road. Margret hushed Marcus’s questions, fright-
ened. “Whatever you do, babies, don’t cough, eh?”
The other passengers wore fearful, nervous
expressions, and no one argued that the man’s treat-
ment was unjust. She was silent. There were times
when questions did more harm than good.
T hey disembarked at Shelby, Iowa. Margret
decided to head to the countryside and come
up with a makeshift camp. She dared not waste
precious money on soft motel beds. It was tempt-
ing, but stupid. They’d been fine on cement, and
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dirt would be an improvement. The passengers She pulled out a little more of the precious
acted so strange; snatches of whispers made Central money. “I’ll take the gum. And the comic book.”
City out to be the source of ultimate evil. Best no Marcus let out a startled noise. “No, Mama! I
one knew where they came from. was only looking, honest.”
At a convenience store north of town, she bought “I know, baby. Let me do this, okay?”
a lighter for starting fires and a few other things He shook his head no, his eyes like saucers.
that looked useful. She asked casually, “I’m looking “Go give it to the lady so she can ring it up.”
for a place called New Hope?” Hesitating and open-mouthed, he did so.
The clerk wrinkled her nose. “That’s Mormon On the way out, she mussed up his hair. “Smile,
country. You one of them?” baby. Live a little.” A sudden sob choked her throat,
“Do I look like it?” Margret laughed. Her mul- but she held it back so he wouldn’t hear.
tiple earrings jangled. “All right, Mama.” He looked up with a wide
The woman sized her up. “Come to think of it, grin, clutching the book with both hands like it
no. What do you want to go up there for?” was solid gold.
“I’m just curious. Aren’t they weird?” Margret Knowing they were close, with easy directions,
only remembered Alyssa saying her friends were made her feel better than she had in weeks. They’d
Christian, not tacking on Mormon. She narrowed have to walk to New Hope from here, but she made
one eye. Maybe she should stop for good in Shelby. up her mind to try; it was a real place, even if it
“It’s hardly a tourist attraction,” the woman was filled with Mormons. Of all the luck. Had she
said. “They’re not as interesting as the Amish. You known beforehand, she may not have worked so
want to see different, go see them. They ain’t too hard.
far neither. Mormons use electricity and computers On the good side, Ralph would never dream of
and all that, and their clothes ain’t even too funny. looking there.
If you ask me, they just got a bad deal from that And they ought to be friendly, if she remem-
Article 28. Those I’ve seen seem almost normal. bered right.
Nice folk.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Nah. We get a few come through here on their
way to or from Utah. You go back out north on
59 about eighty miles. It’s northwest of Holstein a
ways. They say you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks. Come on, Marcus. Natty.”
She’d forgotten to watch them. Marcus clutched
a comic book in his hands, and Natty had her
grubby fingers firmly attached to a package of
bubble gum, which she was working on opening.
“Marcus, weren’t you watching your sister? I’m
sorry, ma’am, they know better. Come on.”
“Okay, Mom.” Marcus put the book on the
rack, with some effort, and went to the door.
“It’s all right.” The woman leaned over the coun-
ter. “I had kids. I know how it is.”
Margret reached to separate the package of gum
from Natty’s determined fingers, but as she did,
something softened. They had so little for fun, and
nothing lately. They were only kids.

Irreantum 115 Winter 2003/Spring 2004

 E d i t o r i a l P o e t r y

Literary Connections to Antiquity Mother-Daughter

By Harlow S. Clark, Poetry Editor She left, and you came.
On her anniversary,

O ne great virtue of imaginative writing is to

make people wonder in delight at why they
haven’t wondered about things they haven’t won-
You put your head down and held
Your breath for the journey.

dered about, like how people with one leg shower, Even in the hospital,
or how the Gadianton Robbers got hold of those You reached for my hand.
ancient secret oaths. You hold it warmly, as she did.
From the ancient world to the modern is a wide We comfort each other.
span, and Janean Justham’s poems in this issue sug- You light up when I look at you.
gest the connection between the two worlds—par- I must smile at your love—
ents who are linked through their parents to people Sweet, patient as your namesake.
they never met and who act as such links for their Your beauty is familiar.
children. Justham’s essay in this issue, “A Poem is
a Gift,” continues our series of poets writing about I watch images of my grandmother
their craft. And her, a beaming baby,
Peter J. Sorensen’s excerpt from The Mormoniad Ghostlike, on the screen.
touches on the question of the proper relationship Even in pictures,
between scripture and literature, something we will
consider at length in an upcoming issue. Sorensen’s Grandma was barely here.
casting of the book of Moroni as a wisdom poem We have that in common—
got me thinking about the Book of Mormon as an Mothers’ mothers who left the room
epic and what good fortune we have in our literary Before we came in.
culture to have three epic poems taken from the
Book of Mormon. A future issue will contain “The I imprint her on my mind,
Wisdom of Moroni,” along with an essay on The Feel for her behind my skin.
Mormoniad, an excerpt from Michael Collings’s I want to ask her if she cooed like you—
The Nephiad, an excerpt from R. Paul Cracroft’s Before she knew this pain at five.
A Certain Testimony, Richard Y. Thurman’s essay You look to me for her nurturance.
on Cracroft, and Richard D. Rust on the Book of I hide my lips in your neck
Mormon as epic. And think about us four—
What secrets of each other we know and lack.
Sleep, but not as she does.
Hold my hand until our eyes close.
One another’s present, we
Search each other’s faces for an angel.
—Janean Justham

Winter 2003/Spring 2004 116 Irreantum

 P o e t r y

Worst Details
just a slit of dark glass showed we talked, we stood, we sang and played,
between his lids. witnessed but did not believe;
come on, dad, i pulled, we sat, we cried, we stared in shock,
on nothing— took with us each one rose, and ate.
like when long grasses buried, he swirls around us still.
sickened by dew, rotted at the root just once he should get the phone,
slip out and fall away in your hands, get the june gift he’ll never see.
making you stagger at night i plan the funeral
that already was,
i prayed with her peer through darkness
but the words dissipated to catch the foe—
in the doorway what will he do next?
not reaching the front room,
much less heaven, and She—lifelong hope—
and misted back on us drums out a rhythm of life
in my belly
one by one,
i told them all, —Janean Justham
heard their gut-wounds
and still stood,
messenger of worst details,
my back her shield
my sons,
charged by the lightning of it,
shaking in the thunder,
reeled under its weight,
determined to say good-bye
when no one could.
had to push them back,
make them let me go
then the enemy
stepped forward from the shadows,
stirred our shocked hearts
with his slim drawn sword—
had to be there
in that small, sacred room,
where she-swan hovered over
the last of her
infinite sorrow overcasting eternal love—
had to lunge in, just to hurt us

Irreantum 117 Winter 2003/Spring 2004

 E s s a y
A Poem Is a Gift
By Janean Justham
“Worst Details” and “Mother-Daughter”
share a common theme, as I experienced
the death of a parent while pregnant with each of
my daughters. “Worst Details” is partly about the
experience of being on the scene and having to
relay terrible information to siblings. It is also about
being in the middle—needing to be with my mother
and possibly dead father and knowing my mother
needed me, but also knowing my children needed
me and trying to protect them from the worst of
the unfolding scene. The last half of the poem hints
about facets of moving on—with the problems I still
had to contend with amid the shock of my father’s
absence—and about new life coming.
“Mother-Daughter” is not an on-the-scene poem,
but one of contemplation of the mother and daugh-
ter roles after the death of my mother and the birth
of a daughter. The summer this daughter was born,
I spent my maternity leave poring over family
records, including a DVD a cousin had put together
that featured grandparents I had never met, as well
as pictures of my parents younger than I had ever
known them, aunts, uncles, cousins of various
generations, and my own brothers and sisters and
myself at different ages.
I had wanted my daughter to be born on my
parents’ anniversary, as her due date was nearby.
However, a planned trip to China spurred my doc-
tor to want to induce her a couple of days before
that. Although my daughter had been in position
for more than a month, she tipped her head to the
side and could not be induced as planned. Attempts
were made to turn her. Options were discussed.
It was finally decided that she would be born by
C-section early in the morning. When I was prepped
for that operation, though, my doctor discovered
that the little thing had put her head back down
and was ready to be born by induction. My doctor
was on her way across the ocean when my baby
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 118
arrived, but it was on my parents’ anniversary—a
gift from the universe to me.
The poem grew out of my reflections on the
situation. Once a mother is gone, there is, by and
large, an end to finding out more about her. What
did I know of my mother? Less than I had thought,
I realized, once I could no longer ask questions.
What did I know of her tiny namesake in my arms?
Very little. What did I know of my grandmother,
who had died when my mother was only five? Not
much more. Yet, I felt we four were connected, and
not just by blood and lineage. I felt a silent spiritual
connection. I had no way to talk to any of them; I
could only reflect, think, remember, ponder. I was
the grieving daughter of a wonderful mother who
was suddenly out of reach. And the mother of a
helpless infant girl. Her grandmother, my mother,
had also been a grieving daughter, mother, and
helpless child. Maybe, I thought, I could learn from
looking and from listening to the silence.
“A poem is a gift,” my sister, Linda, taught me. I
find this to be true. During poignant moments or
times when I am reflecting on life’s gifts (both good
and bad), symbols present themselves or two ideas
merge in my mind to create symbolic images. That’s
when I realize a poem is coming. If I work on what
those ideas mean to me, I can usually deliver them
in the form of language. At times, I have had a phrase
or even lines of a poem run through my head to
announce its imminent creation.
This poem originated with the last line. I had
noticed that holding my baby’s hand reminded
me of how Mom’s hand had felt. Mom was still
very real to me, but gone—out of sight. Yet, here
was another person, another close female relative,
as if in her stead. I realized my new daughter had
just parted company with close associates as well.
Could I be all to her that Mom had been to me? It
seemed daunting, but she needed me to. I longed
to see my mother’s face again but could see it only
in memory or pictures. Or, I discovered, I could
glimpse it in my daughters’ faces.
My maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Winder
Liddle, was almost legendary. All I knew of her was
from viewing a few black-and-white photographs
Irreantum
and what my mother, whose memory of her was
limited, told me. As I watched images of her from
the DVD on my TV screen, I noticed that she
looked as ghostlike in some of the pictures as she
was in my life, as if her image were a symbolic rep-
resentation of the extent of her reality to me. Yet,
she had been really here, and her influence contin-
ues on that side of the family. What seems real and
is here and what is real but is not here began to
swirl around each other in my mind.
My background in the study of language and
the work of British and American masters helps, of
course, as do years of practice and the willingness
to keep tightening each poem.
Janean Justhan lives in Salt Lake City with her
husband and children. She doesn’t count his cats. She
works for the state of Utah and has a B.A. from BYU
in English and an M.A. from the University of Utah
in social work. She is wondering how to market her
first novel.
Irreantum 119
P o e t r y
E x c e r p t
From the Epic Mormoniad:
1 Nephi 4–5
By Peter J. Sorensen
4
B
ut Nephi answered,
Surely Yahweh is mightier than Laban his fifty,
or even his tens of thousands.
Let us go up and be strong like to Moshe
For he spake to the Reed Sea and divided it.
Our fathers came through on dry ground,
The armies of Pharaoh did follow and drown.
Shall he not then judge Laban to destroy him?
Now they four returned to the city by night, and
Nephi went forward alone. And he saw Laban,
sleepy with wine, fallen to earth, and therefore
Nephi drew Laban’s sword from its sheath, and
saw the hilt of pure gold, and of exceeding fine
workmanship, and the blade hard like to Hittite
blades. And the voice of Shekhinah urged him on,
that Nephi raised the sword, and Shekhinah said,
“Slay him, for it is given you; shall one man live at
the price of a whole people?” So Nephi became the
scourge of Yahweh that day, and took Laban by his
hair and smote off his head with his own sword.
And he girded on Laban’s armor, and went forth
to the treasury.
Now at the time Nephi went forth to the treasury,
Lemuel feared his brother had come to harm. There-
fore, Lemuel went over the wall, and found himself
near to Laban’s corse, and seeing that a copper scroll
was on his person, under the cincture of his robe,
he thought, “Surely this is the record of which my
father spoke!” And hoping for his father’s approba-
tion and out of envy for his brother’s courage, he
took the copper scroll and hid it in the folds of his
robe. Then heard he voices of men approaching,
and hastened back again over the wall, that he
might rejoin his brother Nephi.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Zoram, the servant of Laban, kept the treasury, but
did not discover Nephi, for he thought it had been
his master Laban, and so fetched him the plates of
bronze which held the language and history of their
tribe. And Zoram carried the plates, even till they
two were outside the city walls.
When Lemuel saw the armor of Laban, he quaked,
and feared greatly, for that he thought it had been
a shade. Nephi called out, “It is I, fear not.” Then
Zoram, in his turn, was full of fear, and had Nephi
not held him, even as Jacob at Bethel laid hold
upon an angel, he had fled. And Nephi said, “As
Yahweh liveth and as I live, no harm shall befall
thee.” Therefore, when that Zoram had sworn an
oath, he went forth with the two brothers, and they
returned to their father’s tent.
5 When all these therefore had seen the plates, behold
N ow Sariah complained bitterly to Lehi for her
four sons’ sake: “Thou hast led us forth from
our inheritance, and see now how we perish.” But
Lehi said,
Have I not seen God in vision?
Shall his goodness fail me now?
Surely had I tarried at Jerusalem, we all had perished;
But I have obtained a land of promise.
In this I rejoice.
Yahweh shall deliver my sons from Laban’s hand,
And He will bring them to us in the wilderness.
And Sariah repented her words, and sang,
Assuredly Yahweh led us into the wilderness,
He hath holpen my sons, protected them,
delivered them from Laban’s hands
That the things were done that He bade them do.
When therefore these four sons all were come to
their father’s tent, he rejoiced, and their mother was
exceeding glad, for Lehi and Sariah had mourned
them, thinking them dead. Then offered they sac-
rifice and burnt offerings to Yahweh, yes, a thank
offering unto Israel’s God.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
Now of the bronze plates it is written that they held
the five books of Moses
the story of creation
Adam and Eve their story
and the sojourn of Israel;
the reign of the kings, even till Zedekiah, king of Judah
and the prophets, even Jeremiah his words;
the genealogy of Lehi his tribe, and of Laban the
captain of fifty, who were Josephites,
sons of Israel (Jacob), whose house was led out
of Egypt
after that Joseph his son was sold into slavery
and yet preserved his brethren from famine.
This story shall be told all nations, kindreds, tongues
and people;
And their bronze leaves shall not perish; neither
shall they dim.
Lemuel stood off by his own tent, and wondered
greatly. “What is this then that I have done? What
is this scroll of copper which I recovered from off
Laban’s corse?” And being a coarse man, Lemuel
did not read writing, but Laman was a cunning
scribe, who kept the treasury and recorded all Lehi
his father’s accounts. And when Lemuel found
Laman alone, he showed him the copper scroll, and
said, “I wist not what this thing is.” And Laman
read, and behold,
A plan of infamy, to make the gods of Babylon
known in Israel,
yes, a covenant among the elders
to establish new gods in the temple of Yahweh.
Oaths of bloody secrecy, and penalties most dire,
That no one soul of the conspirators should betray
his brother with impunity.
A vile brotherhood for the sake of gain, both of
riches and power,
to set at defiance the promises of Yahweh,
those that reward for good and curse for evil.
A copper scroll to invoke the names of other gods,
to reap the glory of Israel for Babylon.
And when Laman read these things that Lemuel
had set before him, they two became children of
120 Irreantum
vanity, and they turned utterly from Yahweh in
their lust. “Surely,” said Lemuel, “we shall rule over
a great tribe; and the heritage of Nephi, on whom
my father doteth in his old age, shall come to
naught!” And they two made a bond not to reveal
what had passed between them.
Peter J. Sorensen is an associate professor of English at
BYU, where his teaching includes the British Roman-
tic period, Shakespeare, and the epic hero. His most
recent work is Ideas of Ascension and Translation
(Academica, 2004).
Irreantum
M e m o i r
Superman
By Travis K. Manning
I think I know where, if not precisely when, I first
entertained the notion of adoption. Years ago
on a cool April morning in South Salt Lake, I had
faced a village of Lilliputians. At the time, towering
in front of the class at six-foot-nothing, thinning
brown hair, I was Lemuel Gulliver, explorer, traveler.
Mr. Manning is a long name for some kindergart-
ners, especially when your native tongue is Spanish
or Russian or Tongan; when you are no taller than
the height of a doorknob, pronouncing English
diphthongs and consonants demands too much
articulation. So I introduced myself as Superman.
Brown-eyed, blue-eyed, and green-eyed children
smile wide when they whisper it to their table
partners. It’s a ploy I use often, chicanery that helps
me maintain the hegemonic edge. Most every child
knows Superman (or Kim Possible, or SpongeBob).
Many children I substitute-teach know I am role-
playing when I take on the persona of a comic
book hero or cartoon character like the Kryptonite-
fearing, blue-tighted, X-ray visioned Man of Steel;
still, some kids’ countenances brighten into even
wider smiles, and I know I’ve gotten them believing
in the fantastical, the surreal.
Despite being a substitute teacher—then and
now—I envision becoming a father. Then, as now,
Ann and I are attempting to have children of our
own the old-fashioned biological way, but to no
avail. We’ve had tests done, and all systems are go.
There is no valid medical reason that justifies our
infertility. Perhaps the worst part of testing for me
is handing the clear plastic, one-cup sample con-
tainer with white screw-top lid to the nurse at the
desk and explaining (as quietly as possible) that this
is my sample to turn in for lab work. The nurse, a
woman in her early forties with pink fingernail pol-
ish and glasses, doesn’t flinch. But I do. She types
something into her computer; I sign some form in
triplicate and depart moments later with the pink
customer copy folded immediately, in case the per-
121 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
son standing behind me in line might be watching.
I am careful not to drop the form.
I think often about my great-great-great grandfa-
ther Absalom Woolff and his two wives, Lucy Ann
Ambleton and Harriet Wood. My grandmother is
Harriet Wood. Their ability to procreate was sec-
ond to none. They did not need in vitro fertiliza-
tion or ovulation medication. A polygamist, “Appy”
(fondly nicknamed by his two wives) fathered
eighteen children, six sons and twelve daughters.
I would that we were as fertile as they, though I
cannot imagine myself fathering children with two
wives during the same period of time, spending
equal time in two separate beds. Nor can I imagine
providing for twenty-one mouths! The utility and
protocol of plural marriage is beyond my present
comprehension, despite it being an eternally dis-
cussed principle of the Latter-day Saint ecumenism,
of heaven, of the highest degree in the celestial
kingdom. Those who practiced polygamy, like my
grandfather and grandmother, until 1890, when it
was abolished, raised righteous seed unto the Lord.
For them copulation resulted in conception. Appy,
Lucy, and Harriet continued their polygamous
relationship long after the 1890 credo by then-
prophet Wilford Woodruff effectively discontinued
any new plural marriages. I hold in my hand a
copy of a 1908 newspaper article dated November
29 from the Daily Journal and Tribune, Knoxville,
Tennessee, highlighting their golden wedding anni-
versary celebration in Logan, Utah. Appy, Lucy,
and Harriet have thousands of progeny now. Ann
and I have none.
Unlike many teachers, I do not accept the euphoric
notion that my students are my kids. I want to
father my own little family with children that I can
train up to make a difference in the world after I
die, with solid testimonies of the Savior Jesus Christ,
to continue fighting for just political causes, to
defend conservative ideologies, to raise kids of
their own but better than Ann and I had done. I
want children who can visit me on holidays, who
will send me e-mail photos of my grandkids, who
will remember the eternal truths I have taught
them and act accordingly, who will send colorful
scribbled refrigerator art regularly.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 122
Students in elementary school are not my sur-
rogate progeny, though I’m tempted after days like
this one in April to embrace such a stance. Diego
asked me if I could fly for him at first recess because
I had said, after all, that my name was Superman.
I said I would, knowing he would forget. But Diego
did not forget. Fifty minutes later I galloped around
the playground, cruising through the woodchip-
laden kindergarten play area, arms stretched wide,
I will learn that
leaving stacks of books
and papers out on the
coffee table and
living room floor
is like leaving
roadside bombs
waiting to be triggered.
sneakers kicking up shavings and dust like a rooster
tail behind a speedboat, weaving in and out of red
plastic slides, a fireman’s pole, and black swings
with long chains, bending from side to side, articu-
lating swooshing and drowning sounds. Creativity
is a substitute teacher’s biggest asset, if only to
survive children’s poor behavior as they attempt to
understand change in their normal daily routine. I
employ innovative approaches to stay at least one
step ahead of the chaos lurking in their lunchboxes,
one step ahead of the anarchy that could be set off
by merely one querulous little student. With sub-
stitute teaching, and childrearing, the scientific law
of entropy reins: like atoms, children tend toward
agitation and then chaos, if unchecked. Children
dislike disruption in their protective classroom
environment, so they often become robots and
saber-toothed tigers, dragons, monsters, and other
unfriendly and imaginative creatures.
Students, much like substitute teachers, uti-
lize their ingenuity to grapple with change, in
Irreantum
elementary school and even in high school. I don’t
mind being sworn at, threatened, or disrespected
by high school students, because it doesn’t happen
all the time. I always know that once the last bell
rings at 2:15 or 2:30, I will turn off the lights, lock
the door, return my classroom keys to the public
office, smile to the school principal or attendance
secretary, and go home. But Juan did not buy my
comic book hero routine entirely on that spring
morning. Or perhaps he did and wanted me to
take my masquerade to the next level—I don’t
rightly know. So he suggested that I couldn’t actu-
ally fly because I wouldn’t show the S on my chest.
Though I didn’t understand his reasoning or ratio-
nale—and I truly wanted to, I did—I told him that
I never let people see my S while at school.
I still don’t let most people see my S, let alone
students, and several summers after substituting in
this Title I south-side Salt Lake City kindergarten
class, after tying seven-and-a-half pairs of shoes and
singing the Barney cleanup song six times—“Clean
up, clean up, everybody clean up”—I wonder who
I really am. I know I am a child of God—at least, I
have a pretty good feeling about it—but when will
I begin to raise children, too? Maybe the invented
S on my chest represents scared and not Superman.
Afraid to have children of my own. Or maybe it
represents self-absorbed, which is what my life is
for me now to a certain degree without children to
nurture, my extra energy wrapped up in personal
hobbies like mountain biking and basketball.
When we do have children, I will have to better
learn how to clean up my own messes. My friend
John came over recently and said, right off, “Your
house is not child-proof!” With two children of his
own, he knows of what he speaks. I suppose I will
learn to shut the door to my office and lock it, and
I will learn that leaving stacks of books and papers
out on the coffee table and living room floor is like
leaving roadside bombs waiting to be triggered. Like
billions of human beings and animals before me, I
suppose I will, akin to the United States Marines in
Afghanistan and Iraq, adapt and overcome.
Again, my mind goes back to that emotionally
draining day more than two years ago. We feasted
on breakfast, snack, and lunch—all in one morning.
Irreantum 123
My favorite meal was snack: green Jell-O in a small,
clear cup with a carton of orange drink, something
akin to Sunny Delight but thicker, the consistency
of eggnog. I was grateful for the free meals, as food
ameliorated my attention span and mental sharpness,
an acute mental state that is imperative for working
with curious little brains and hands and feet. Teach-
ing children, like being in the front lines of war, is
physically and emotionally exhausting. The cyclical
process of interpreting emotion, then emoting, rein-
terpreting emotion, then emoting again—teach-
ing, parenting—multiple times every minute for six
hours drains my soul. After a day of substituting
kindergartners, I am an old-fashioned, cast-iron
bathtub: cold, dank, hard, with the drain plug
lying askance, getting dripped on. The emotional
exchanges between me and the children siphon
my patience like chocolate milk through a straw. I
hope to be in top physical and emotional condition
for our future children, as it will try my resolve at
all levels. But I know I will never be that ready. I
am told no amount of training can successfully pre-
pare future parents, as the real training is largely on
the job. Baptism by fire. Do or die. I asked my own
mother a few years ago, perhaps when I was dating
the woman I eventually married, how she and my
father successfully raised seven children. Her guile-
less response: “Well, Travis,” she said after giving it
some thought, “we took them one at a time.”
Without trying to be negative, parental opti-
mism is itself a fairytale: we cannot choreograph
the precise plot of our child’s future, or orchestrate
all character development, or construct the denoue-
ment of their lives. We can affect children for good,
but we cannot force them. The tales of their lives
must go on despite our lack of literary control.
Each human being, child and adult, poor and rich,
female and male, develops an important life story,
or series of stories, worth telling. A complicated
story problem, we are all the sum of the stories of
our lives. As children, and as parents of children,
we must attempt to write our own narratives if
we want to be remembered. And we must all be
remembered.
If Ann and I don’t conceive soon, we will adopt.
We have signed up with LDS Family Services and
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
are waiting for their criminally slow interviewing
and paperwork process to progress. We’re willing
to lay down a thousand dollars of penny-pinching
to let them know we’re serious, then look at the
“menu” (my words) of what kind of child we would
like to bring into our home. The menu, the step
we’re waiting for, is where we ascertain which type
of child we want, the variety, make, and model, so
to speak. Or, like perusing the selection at a Denny’s
restaurant before ordering, we can choose nachos,
and a burger and fries, and a chef ’s salad if we’re
really famished; we can select race, gender, and age
for our adopted child. We can order a baby or an
older child, one with a mental or physical disability
(or both), pink-skinned, brown-skinned, or other-
wise; one without a crack-addicted mother, or an
unknown father; one from the United States, or not.
The selection process is exhaustive and demor-
alizing. Demoralizing because all children need
dedicated and able-bodied parents, regardless of
their storied past. To judge a child’s worthiness for
adoption is degrading to them, to their parents, to
their future parents. Yet the process is necessary.
Both birth parents and adopting parents want
what’s best for their children, despite the subjective
nature of the adoption procedure, the choosing and
deciding, the acceptance and rejection. What if
we choose the wrong child or we’re chosen as the
wrong parents? But we are also looking into other
avenues and back alleyways for opportunities. The
cheaper the better, we’re saying, but we’re willing to
buy a kid on installments.
At breakfast that spring day in April, a Tongan
student threw up all over himself. I didn’t see the
actual remnants, but I did notice the teacher walk-
ing him out the door and down the hall to the
bathroom to clean up. A sign in the cafeteria caught
my attention: “Adults, please do not take food from
our hungry children. Meals may be purchased for
$2.25.” I don’t know who is or was eating their
food. Perhaps the cafeteria helpers, teacher aids,
custodians, or cafeteria workers themselves, I don’t
know. Maybe it was PTA moms who volunteer
their time to help kids read, practice spelling, and
do math. I found the sign bizarre. My children,
adopted or not, will never go without food. We
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 124
will not always own a new car or purchase the
latest videogames, and we will definitely not take
European vacations, but we will eat.
After breakfast and before recess, we painted
with well-used watercolors on mini easels three feet
high: wet yellows, blues, greens, reds—plain colors
with simple names on regular paper. Primary col-
ors, representative of both the simpleness and the
complexity of the human race, a spectrum of color
as there is a spectrum of ethnic diversity. I filled nine
plastic cups (looking suspiciously like old Jell-O
containers or cousins to sperm-sample cups) one-
quarter full with water and masking-taped white
art paper above little silver metal chairs with blue
seats. Two kids at a time tapped confidently on
two Compaq keyboards in the corner, wearing
headphones and staring into seventeen-inch moni-
tors practicing English, shape identification, and
numbers. From the eye of the storm (the midpoint
of the classroom), I could see other stations in this
small municipality of midgets (some would say
angels), with pupils writing letters clenching black
No. 2 pencils without erasers, then folding letters
into slick letter-size white envelopes, then deliver-
ing them to classroom cubby slots for classmates
to read on the bus ride home. There was a free
reading section with red, yellow, and green plastic
beanbags; large picture books, Where the Wild
Things Are, The Cat in the Hat, The Little Engine
That Could; and wooden puzzles with fifty states
and dinosaurs, alphabets and numbers, to practice
eye-hand coordination and object manipulation.
In one learning station a boy with wild eyes wore
a brown wig. I suddenly remembered, then, why I
was substituting for Mrs. Begay and why this boy
should not wear a communal item like a wig, even
for role-playing. Mrs. Begay had lice, and it would
be three days of hair treatment and washing sheets,
clothes, jackets, car, and furniture before she would
return. As a child, I had once contracted lice. My
mother had washed mountains of laundry and boiled
brushes and combs for seven children. We had washed
and rewashed our hair with tar-smelling shampoo.
The effect on my scalp was a tingling sensation and
a smell something like a cross between pinesap,
Murphy’s Oil, and Drain-o.
Irreantum
 Kindergartners fascinated me that day. Clumsy
hands cut paper and smeared Magic Glue with
gooey fingers. Magic Glue, as it is aptly called, is
for me a new phenomenon in the realm of child
education innovation. When I attended kinder-
garten in 1975, we had little translucent bottles
of white Elmer’s glue with orange screw-on tips.
When you twisted the grooved orange top and
squoze the bottle, thin white worms ejected from
the tip. And if you got it on your hands and
clothes, you had to use soap, water, and a rag or
paper towel to clean yourself. Not so with Magic
Glue! The lazy liquid must have been invented by
NASA or Bill Nye the Science Guy, because it does
not get messy when it smears. One can simply rub
one’s hands together, and Magic Glue disappears. It
is much like self-drying, alcohol-based cleaning gel.
Next to the invention of the computer, Magic Glue
has got to be the greatest modern convenience for
the elementary classroom.
When talking about children, I do not normally
like to discuss the smell of poverty, because it brings
back vivid memories of shopping at Deseret Indus-
tries, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army as a boy
with my parents and six siblings. I do not like to
discuss the smell of poverty, because there are those
who might say I am not qualified to speak on such
matters, that I am labeling, merely stereotyping;
but it does not take a high school diploma to dis-
cern good smell from bad. The smell of mothballs,
or something like it, and unwashed children in a
closed classroom are, for me, two of the most pun-
gent smells I know. Such was this kindergarten class.
I enjoy hunkering over a musty-smelling, leather-
bound volume in a library archive, but thirty open,
musty books is too debilitating for my olfactory
senses. I worked one summer as a commercial roofer
repairing leaks, and one job required that we replace
the foam surface on a digester—a sewage digester.
To this day, the smell of bacteria-induced feces
fermenting in a gigantic concrete sewage digester is
lucid in my mind. I vowed from that day on that
my future children would bathe often and wear clean
clothes to school. I do not think this statement is
elitist or judgmental. To speak of poverty is not to
degrade those students, like myself, who endured
Irreantum 125
it. For birth parents or adopting parents, it is com-
mon sense. Children worldwide deserve clean clothes
and clean bodies, no matter where or how they may
live, just as each child deserves food, caring adults,
honest friends, and a religious grounding in the
standard works.
Unlike Robert Fulghum, in his best-selling All I
Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, stu-
dents in this kindergarten were not taught all they
needed to know about personal hygiene. Neither
were their parents. I do not fault their difficulties
but merely point them out. Parenthood requires
that parents comprehend the fundamentals of rais-
ing a child, of their physical, mental, and spiritual
development. As Fulghum, I remember the seed in
the Styrofoam cup. The roots go down and the plant
goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but
we are all like that. Teaching children has provided
me with repeated opportunities to evaluate my own
child-rearing desires, my own strengths and weak-
nesses of character.
Despite the odors of some classrooms, I will have
to say, however, that I’ve never been hugged by any-
one as much before, even my wife. Poverty does not
depress all emotive intuition. As has happened to
me many times while teaching, I could be standing,
watching, or helping students, and out of nowhere
a kindergartner would latch onto my leg, right
about my knee, a double-handed tight squeeze of
affection (sometimes a runny nose leaving a wet
spot somewhere near my thigh). Or, while walking
down the hall little girls or boys would spontaneously
reach up and grasp the hands of a stranger—mine.
Sometimes children reach for each of my hands
simultaneously. Their loving spontaneity and meek-
ness are qualities I have rarely seen in myself. I long
to hold the hands of my own children, father with
daughter, father with son. Adopted or no, it makes
no difference.
Travis Manning is IRREANTUM’s essay editor.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 R e v i e w s friends are drawn together by religion, which is an
2003 in Review:
Mormon Fiction and Drama
By Andrew Hall
Novels
W hile 2003 was a relatively quiet year for Mor-
mons in the national market, the growth of
the Mormon-specific market continued unabated.
The five largest Mormon publishers released seventy-
seven novels in 2003, up from fifty-nine in 2002
and forty-nine in 2001. The community of literary
critics has not, unfortunately, kept pace with this
growth in publishing, and therefore serious reviews
of a majority of these works have yet to appear.
While for many of these unreviewed books the
silence is undoubtedly charitable, I am afraid that
some notable novels have escaped my attention, for
which I apologize.
I was disappointed by the lack of a significant
nationally published adult literary novel either
by or about Mormons in 2003. Fortunately, the
continuing flood of quality young adult novels by
Mormon authors helps to make up for the scarcity
of material for adults. Six young adult novels were
published in 2003, perhaps most notably Shannon
Hale’s debut fantasy The Goose Girl. A retelling of a
Grimm’s fairy tale for middle school readers, it has
garnered numerous positive reviews. For example,
a reviewer in School Library Journal wrote, “Hale’s
retelling is a wonderfully rich one, full of eloquent
description and lovely imagery, and with a complex
plot, a large cast of characters, and a strong female
protagonist. Fans of high fantasy will be delighted
with this novel.”
Several veteran authors produced notable works
for older teens last year. Kristen D. Randle’s Slum-
ming is the story of three Mormon high school
students who pledge to reform one school misfit
each, with unexpected results. One reviewer com-
mented, “The premise of trying to impose one’s
ideals and values on others without knowing their
circumstances is a life lesson that gives teens much to
think about.” Another wrote, “The fact that these
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 126
integral part of their lives, is particularly refreshing.”
John H. Ritter’s middle school novel The Boy Who
Saved Baseball will, according to one enthusiastic
reviewer, “have readers feeling they are actually
at the ballpark tasting the swirling dust amid the
authentic Mexican food cooked by the supportive
townspeople.” Reviewers of Kimberly Heuston’s
second historical novel, Dante’s Daughter, praised
her for the richness of detail on fourteenth century
European domestic, political, and artistic life but
also noted that the attention to detail tended to
overwhelm the story. Martine Bates Leavitt’s Tom
Finder, a coming-of-age story of a boy facing harsh
realities living on the streets, received positive
notices. Finally, in a lighter vein, Janette Rallison
produced All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School, a
comic high school romance.
In speculative fiction, Orson Scott Card and
Dave Farland continue to produce the kind of sto-
ries that have earned them devoted readers. Card
released three books: Robota, a stylish collaboration
with the illustrator/movie designer Doug Chiang;
First Meetings, a collection of four novellas set in
the Ender’s Game universe; and The Crystal City,
the sixth and penultimate volume of the Alvin
Maker series. Card has consistently been at his
most imaginative with Alvin Maker, but the side-
tracked plots and lack of character development
in the last two volumes have been disappointing.
Card manages a bit of a comeback with The Crystal
City, by bringing the central thrust of the story
back into focus. By creating an equivalent to Nau-
voo, Card connects the alternative universe of the
series closer to the Joseph Smith story than he has
since the first volume.
David Farland (the pseudonym of Dave Wolver-
ton) issued the forth and final volume of his Rune-
lords series, Lair of Bones. While Publisher’s Weekly
said it reads like a hallucination, “full of rich and
brilliant descriptions, but not always making much
sense,” most other reviewers were much more posi-
tive, citing its suspense, action, characterizations,
and deep moral center. I was very impressed with
some of Wolverton’s earlier novels, so this latest
series is high on my list of books to read.
Irreantum
 Anne Perry continues her prolific work in the
mystery genre with four new publications. Besides
entries in her long-running Pitt and Monk series, set
in Victorian England, she released No Graves as Yet,
the first in a new mystery/spy series set in Cambridge
on the eve of the First World War. She found an
American publisher for Come Armageddon, the sequel
to the allegorical fantasy novel Tathea, which Deseret
Book published in 1999. Reviews of the sequel were
generally poor; for example, one reviewer wrote, “The
epic scale describes cities and countries, not individu-
als, which blunts emotional impact, and characters too
often descend into types.”
Professional critics have voiced little but disdain
for Richard Paul Evans’s sentimental novels, includ-
ing the new A Perfect Day. A reviewer at Publisher’s
Weekly, however, seems to have captured the appeal
to Evans’s legion of fans: “The inevitable twist is
clever, the writing throughout assured, the senti-
ment unapologetic and the author confident that
he knows just what his readers want and that he’s
the man to give it to them.”
Two novels of note appeared from smaller non-
Mormon presses: Gerald Grimmet’s farce The
Wives of Short Creek, published by a small Western
publisher; and Brett Alan Sanders’s first novel, A
Bride Called Freedom, published by a Spanish-lan-
guage press in bilingual form. Grimmet’s tale of
the turmoil caused by the discovery of a lost Joseph
Smith prophecy comically skewers polygamists,
mainstream Mormons, and most everyone else
in the Utah/Arizona region. Sanders’s more seri-
ous work tells the story of a legendary nineteenth
century Argentinean woman who is captured by
Indians and comes to love them. I was impressed
by a pair of stories Sanders published in Dialogue in
recent years and therefore look forward to reading
this novel.
Moving on to the Mormon-specific market, Sig-
nature Books continues to play in a different league
from its competitors in terms of the content and
marketing of its publications. Signature published
four literary works in 2003: novels by Paul Edwards,
Jack Harrell, and Douglas Thayer and a poetry col-
lection by Paul Swenson. Although the three novels
vary widely in style and tone, all are notable for the
Irreantum 127
complexity of the characters and the nuanced obser-
vations on faith in the modern world. Unfortunately,
all three novels appear to be fated to almost com-
plete obscurity among Mormons, in part because
of their literary nature but also because almost
no Signature literary titles have appeared on the
shelves of Mormon-specific bookshelves for several
years now.
Paul Edwards’s murder mystery The Angel Acronym
is perhaps the most accessible of the three. Edwards
sets the story in the administrative structure of the
Community of Christ (RLDS Church), where
Edwards himself worked for a time as a historian.
Several reviewers praised Edwards for his humor,
his creation of a fascinating and complex pro-
tagonist, and his insightful musings on the nexus of
faith and organizational behavior. Some, however,
expressed frustration that Edwards squandered the
work’s momentum by allowing the central mystery
to be resolved halfway through the book.
Jack Harrell’s first novel, Vernal Promises, is a
more serious work about a young man with an
addictive personality, who swings between abuse of
drugs, alcohol, and sex and outward observances
of religion and personal piety, finding no relief for
his suffering in either direction. Its portrayal of a
young, serious-minded man haunted by the specter
of a harsh, merciless God seems reminiscent of Levi
Peterson’s The Backslider and John Bennion’s Falling
Toward Heaven. Reviewer Jeff Needle praised both
the content and style of the novel, calling it a “par-
able of religious excess and radical human weakness
. . . a chilling, thoroughly engrossing reading, with
one of the most engaging protagonists I’ve come
across in a long time . . . a triumph in the world of
Mormon publishing.”
Although Douglas Thayer was a central figure
in the birth of modern Mormon literature in the
1970s, his novel The Conversion of Jeff Williams
is only his second published novel and is his first
in twenty years. It tells the story of a teenage boy
who spends a summer with his seriously ill cousin
in Provo. Jeff Needle called the novel, “an extraor-
dinary, and extraordinarily ordinary, tale of youth,
emergence and discovery . . . [Thayer] explores just
what it means to be a Mormon teen in a world
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
essentially hostile to traditional Mormon values.”
Richard Cracroft wrote, “This landmark novel is
the finest fictional exploration to date of growing
up humanly and mormonly. [It is] clearly the best
coming-of-age novel in Latter-day Saint literature
. . . It is a tender and moving love song to spiritual-
ity and a Mormon world view.”
Existing in almost a different universe from the
outsider Signature Books is the LDS Church–owned
and financed Deseret Books. Despite its institu-
tional nature, however, Deseret has in recent years
published a number of remarkable works, most
notably Margaret Blair Young and Darius Aidan
Gray’s historical fiction series Standing on the Promises,
which retells the stories of African-Americans in
the church. In 2003 the third and final volume,
The Last Mile of the Way, appeared, picking up the
narrative at the turn of the century and taking it
to the 1978 revelation on the priesthood and the
present day. Young and Gray have succeeded in cre-
ating an achingly beautiful masterpiece, combining
a comfortably familiar narrative voice with incisive
social commentary and descriptions of the pain
caused by discrimination both inside and outside
the church.
Almost equal to The Last Mile of the Way in
terms of thematic depth and stylistic skill is Dean
Hughes’s How Many Roads, the eighth volume
overall in his Children of the Promise and Hearts of
the Children historical fiction series, bringing the
story to 1968. How Many Roads, the best-selling
novel for a Mormon publisher in 2003, evenhand-
edly explores the social and internal conflict that
occurred when those raised with traditional Mor-
mon values encountered the ideas and attitudes
gaining ground in 1968. Hughes, in his clean,
straightforward writing style, does a fantastic job
of exploring the Mormon experience of life within
this pivotal era through a wide variety of points of
view. After eight years of consistently excellent work,
it could become easy to take Hughes for granted,
but one should not.
Desert published thirteen novels in 2003, up
from eight in 2002. Among its top-selling novels
were Jack Weyland’s Cheyenne in New York and
Ron Carter’s The Impending Storm. Deseret has
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 128
found success in convincing successful Mormon
authors to publish Mormon-specific works with
them, including Anne Perry and Orson Scott Card.
In 2003 they published the awkwardly titled The
Great and the Terrible: Prologue, The Brothers by
Chris Stewart, a nationally known author of techno/
military thrillers. It is the first of a series following
characters from the preexistence through the last
days.
Every year in recent memory, Covenant Com-
munications, Deseret’s main competitor, breaks its
previous record of total new fiction published. In
2003 they published thirty-three novels, up from
twenty-five in 2002, an unprecedented amount
for the Mormon market. Part of the reason for the
company’s ability to publish so much may be that
a majority of the releases are exclusively paperback.
Most of the titles are romances or thrillers, and few
appear to have lasting literary value. Readers should
fear for any young husband in a Covenant romance,
because a reoccurring motif is husbands who die
young. I suppose this is because an early marriage
that ends in the husband’s death marks the wife as
a respectable, mature woman with some emotional
heft and the chance to have a little fun, a character
that might appeal to many female readers.
The most frequent site of Covenant reviews is
the online Meridian Magazine, where Covenant
authors themselves review their fellow authors.
From their reviews, four novels that appear to stand
out are N. C. Allen’s Faith of Our Fathers Vol. 3:
Through the Perilous Fight, Michelle Ashman Bell’s
Timeless Moment, Jeannie Hansen’s Breaking Point,
and Lynn Gardner’s Rubies and Rebels. By far the
best-selling author at Covenant, and probably the
best overall selling Mormon fiction author in 2003,
was Anita Stansfield, who released three volumes of
her Gables of Legacy romance series over the course
of the year.
The next most active literary Mormon publisher
is Cedar Fort, which published twenty-three novels,
up from nineteen in 2002. The owner of Cedar
Fort, Lee Nelson, produced what may have been
the publishing coup of the year, convincing the
Mark Twain estate to allow him to write a middle
and ending for a fragmentary rough draft called
Irreantum
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians.
Twain, in the original, used Huck as the narrator
and put him, Tom, and Jim in a group traveling in
Indian country and falling under attack, with sev-
eral taken captive. Twain abandoned the story after
about fifty-six pages, and Nelson, a prolific author
of Western adventure tales, wrote an additional two
hundred pages to complete the story. Reviews of
the work vary widely, some focusing on the defi-
ciencies in Nelson’s writing style and others taking
offense at his generally approving description of
Mormon characters, considering Twain’s known deri-
sion of Mormonism. Many fan-reviewers noted,
however, that while Nelson does not have the liter-
ary chops of Twain, he can tell a ripping good yarn.
It was Cedar Fort’s best-selling book of the year.
Cedar Fort authors Josi Kilpack and James Crow-
ley received good notices for their new books.
Kilpack’s Surrounded by Strangers is about a Mor-
mon woman who takes her children and flees her
affluent Salt Lake life to Arkansas after the legal
system fails to protect the family from her abusive
husband. Charlene Hirschi of Cache Magazine said
she was impressed with Kilpack’s “ability to tell a
spellbinding story” and her “maturity of writing
style.” Crowley’s The Magic Hour is a young adult
supernatural thriller about the ability of a child
to communicate with his dead twin. Reviewer
Carolyn Howard-Johnson said that Crowley “drew
upon various ancient beliefs, superstitions and folk
tales to give the work depth and texture.”
Other Cedar Fort works that have received some
attention are Rachael Nunes’s Where I Belong, about
a young woman torn between motherhood and
an artistic career; Marilyn Arnold’s The Classmates,
about a group of elderly friends who solve a mystery;
and Jeff Call’s Rolling with the Tide, about a Mor-
mon quarterback at the University of Alabama.
Among the smaller houses, Granite published
four novels, about its average for the last several
years. Granite has acquired Evans Books, a distrib-
utor for smaller presses and independent authors.
After a period of reorganization, Horizon reen-
tered the Mormon fiction market with two books
authored or coauthored by Jack Weyland. A new
press, Mapletree Publishing, announced its arrival
Irreantum 129
with one new novel and several more scheduled
for the following year. Finally, two novelizations
of LDS films, The R.M. and Saints and Soldiers,
were published by their respective film distribution
companies.
Short Fiction
T hree Mormon-specific journals, Dialogue,
Irreantum, and Sunstone, publish short fiction.
The three published twenty-four stories in 2003,
up from eighteen in 2002 and sixteen in 2001. The
best of the group, I thought, were Levi Peterson’s
“Brothers” and Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner’s
“A Good Sign,” both emotionally powerful stories
about family bonds that appeared in the summer
2003 (36:2) volume of Dialogue. One collection of
short stories was released by a Mormon publisher:
Jack Weyland’s Everyone Gets Married in the End,
published by Horizon.
Nationally, Brian Evenson, Neil LaBute, and
Darrell Spencer published stories in literary jour-
nals, Lee Allred and M. Shayne Bell published
stories in speculative fiction magazines, and Orson
Scott Card published three stories in short fiction
anthologies. As mentioned above, Card released a
collection of Ender Wiggin–related novellas.
Theater
T
his past year saw several premieres by young
Mormon playwrights, most notably the off-
off-Broadway September production of Erik Orton’s
musical Berlin. The play, previously workshopped
at Brigham Young University, tells the story of the
1948 Berlin airlift through the eyes of German,
American, and Russian characters. Reviewers praised
Orton’s music and the professional quality of the
production, although they were less enthusiastic
about the script. Matthew Murray of Talkin’ Broad-
way said the performance was that of “a brightly
polished, large-scale Broadway hit. The kind of
confidence that this show has . . . can’t help but
be infectious. It’s one of the few things that is,
though—just about everything else in Berlin has
been seen before elsewhere. Think of this show as
a cross between Les Miserables and Chess . . . The
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
result is a show that works slavishly to inform and
entertain, but does neither well enough to be cap-
tivating.” The show garnered significant attention
in New York, and there is hope for an off-Broadway
run. Orton previously coauthored the LDS Church’s
Savior of the World pageant and works as a produc-
tion manager for Broadway touring companies.
An even younger group of promising playwrights
has begun to emerge from the campuses of Utah
Valley. LeeAnne Hill Adams, a recent BYU student,
for the second year in a row had a play about the
Soviet Union appear in the BYU theatrical season.
Her 2003 play, Archipelago, reached for an epic
scale in its depiction of the Soviet Gulag. It hung a
variety of stories of prison camp atrocities, as well as
a farcical satire of the treachery of Stalin’s Politburo,
on the framework plot device of prisoners staging
a production of Gogol’s The Inspector General.
Reviewers almost universally praised the cumula-
tive power of the stories and the lyricism of the
script, while also noting that too much was occur-
ring on stage at once. Eric D. Snider wrote in the
Provo Daily Herald, “The play’s structure allows for
much theatricality and experimentation, and direc-
tor Rodger Sorensen is more than happy to explore.
He is particularly fond of the text’s Brechtian ele-
ments, constantly reminding the audience they’re
watching a play, sometimes through conventional
means like having no backstage space and letting
characters talk to the audience, and sometimes
through more unusual methods like introducing
multimedia into the mix. We see a pro-Stalin pro-
paganda commercial, and some scenes are broadcast
on monitors by surveillance cameras set above the
stage. At one point, through Terry Gilliam– style
animation, Marx and Lenin engage in a heated
ideological debate. Whether Sorensen’s innovations
add to Adams’ text is open for debate . . . The gim-
micks are cool, and maybe that’s enough, but maybe
they also distract from the play’s basic, more soulful
intentions.” Adams has recently moved to Califor-
nia, where she intends to work as a screenwriter.
Another student-authored main stage BYU pro-
duction was Tony Gunn’s Smart Single Guys, a
bitingly funny satire on student life that played to
a full run of sold-out shows in November. Gunn
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 130
is currently working on a film version of the play,
and he founded the Provo Fringe Festival, a forum
for student-written plays. One scheduled for 2004
is by Leslie Hart Gunn, Tony’s wife, who BYU
drama professor Eric Samuelsen called one of the
best young writers he has taught.
Finally, the Utah Valley State College theater
department presented Farewell to Eden, the debut
work by student Mahonri Stewart. It is a draw-
ing-room melodrama, laced with comically arch
dialogue, that tells the story of an upper-class mid-
nineteenth-century British household upended by
the preaching of Brigham Young and John Taylor.
Rather than focus on the Mormon characters, how-
ever (the apostles appear onstage for only five min-
utes), Stewart uses Mormonism as a device to expose
the hypocrisy and cruelty of the British social and
economic structure. Eric Samuelsen commented,
“There’s genuine wit and bite in the dialogue, and
the characters are sharply drawn . . . a very power-
ful and impressive debut.” Farewell to Eden was
chosen to participate in the prestigious American
College Theater Festival regional competition in
February 2004 and was held over for consideration
to participate in the national festival in Washing-
ton, D.C.
Moving on to the next older generation, Neil
LaBute continues to enjoy the strongest, and most
iconoclastic, reputation among LDS playwrights.
January saw the final weeks of the Broadway run
of his 9/11-centered drama The Mercy Seat, and
the scripts of both that play and his 2002 work
The Distance from Here were published in 2003.
LaBute’s film version of his 2001 play The Shape of
Things was released early in the year. Productions
of LaBute works occurred all over the world in
2003: Bash: Latter-day Plays in Paris, The Shape of
Things in New Zealand, and The Mercy Seat at the
prestigious Dutches Theater in Berlin. LaBute did
have one new work in 2003, a one-act titled Merge,
which was produced at the University of Miami
Summer Shorts Festival. Perhaps most notably for
the LDS audience, the Plan B Theater Company in
Salt Lake City staged a production of Bash, his one
major play that includes Mormon characters and
the first major production of a LaBute play in Utah
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since he left BYU. It received strong reviews in the
Utah newspapers, and Ivan Lincoln of the Deseret
Morning News listed it as one of the best dramas
produced in Utah in the year.
The biggest story in LDS theater in 2002 was
the establishment in Orem, Utah, of the Nauvoo
Theatrical Society, a dramatic company dedicated
to producing Mormon-themed plays. Early in 2003
the company staged two works: The Way We’re
Wired, Eric Samuelsen’s comic tale of single Mor-
mons; and Stones, Scott Bronson’s moving inter-
pretation of two Biblical stories. Both productions
were revivals of recent AML prize-winning dramas,
and both received strong praise for the scripts,
staging, and acting. For example, D. Michael Mar-
tindale on AML-List called Stones “a quintessential
piece of LDS drama that does what all pieces of
LDS drama should aspire to. . . . A masterful example
of how vital art is to one’s emotional, intellectual,
and spiritual development.” Unfortunately, both
productions drew relatively small audiences. In
the spring, financial pressures and difficulties with
municipal fire officials forced the company to leave
its Center Street Theater in Orem and cancel the
rest of the season. The company is currently reorga-
nizing and is planning a seven-play 2004–5 season,
beginning in August 2004.
The September 11 tragedy was the setting of
Reed McColm’s 2002 play Hole in the Sky, in which
he imagined what might have occurred among a
group of people stuck on an upper floor of the
World Trade Center from the time of the first impact
until the tower’s collapse. The original BYU–Idaho
production ran to sold-out houses and was awarded
an AML drama prize. The Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity theater department produced the work in
November, and like Farewell to Eden it was chosen
to participate in a regional competition of the
American College Theater Festival.
For two months in the spring, the Village The-
atre near Seattle staged Michael McLean and Kevin
Kelly’s refashioned musical The Ark, which enjoyed
a very successful run at Utah’s Thanksgiving Point
in 2002. A comic retelling of the story of Noah and
the ark, the show received fairly good reviews from
the Seattle newspapers, which praised its humor
Irreantum 131
and music while criticizing the sections that strained
to be inspirational, particularly the slow ending.
Both reviewers noted that despite their reservations,
the play appeared to be a big hit with the audiences.
The Bountiful Performing Arts Center in Utah
staged three works by an older generation of LDS
authors: Thomas Rogers’s Huebener, Dale White’s
Saints and Strangers, and the late Ralph Rogers’s
Christmas musical Joseph and Mary: A Love Story.
Huebener, which tells the true story of three Mor-
mon teens in Hamburg, Germany, who defied
the Nazi party by distributing illegal anti-Hitler
pamphlets in 1942, was a ground-breaking piece
of LDS drama when it was first produced at BYU
in 1976. Ivan Lincoln rated the new production,
directed by Rogers, as one of the state’s best dramas
of the year and said it was an “intense, emotionally
moving drama . . . an important piece of literature
which deserves a broad audience.” Saints and Strangers
is a new musical drama about the pilgrim voyage
on the Mayflower. White is a veteran Hollywood
actor and crew member, whose career goes back to
a role in the Jack Benny Show in the 1950s.
Two works based on true stories of homosexuals
within Utah Mormon culture were staged in 2003.
Steven Fales has performed versions of his one-man,
autobiographical show Confessions of a Mormon
Boy (also known as X’d) in several cities for the last
three years. The monologue, which includes com-
edy, singing, and dancing, tells the story of Fales’s
struggle and eventual acceptance of his same-sex
attraction, resulting in his divorce and excommu-
nication. In 2003 the show appeared in Las Vegas,
Miami, and Portland, and a version was published
in the December 2003 issue of Sunstone. An off-
Broadway run, directed by the Tony award winner
Jack Hofsiss, was scheduled for September 2003 at
the Acorn Theatre but has been postponed. Mean-
while in Utah, James Rapier, the artistic director of
the Plan-B Theater Company, created A Peculiar
People, a docudrama about being gay and/or HIV
positive in Utah society, which played at the Rose
Wagner Theater. Rapier borrowed the forms used
in The Laramie Project, with actors reading or act-
ing out real-life testimonials. Claudia Harris in
the Salt Lake Tribune wrote that the play “is never
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
strident or maudlin . . . Rapier manages to create a
moving but disturbing account of Utah attitudes.”
Two pieces of religious-themed dramatic music
debuted in Utah County in 2003: Robert Millet’s
oratorio Passage of Glory, which told the story of
Joseph Smith and the restoration, and Meredith
Ryan Taylor’s Book of Mormon–themed opera
Abinadi.
Finally, two well-known LDS theatrical figures
passed away in 2003: Ruth Hale and Gordon Jump.
Ruth Hale and her husband Nathan, who died in
1994, founded the Glendale Center Theatre in
Southern California in the 1950s and then in 1985
the Hale Center Theater in South Salt Lake, which
has since grown into one of the largest cultural
institutions in Utah. The Hales wrote more than
eighty plays, most of them light, family-friendly
comedies. Gordon Jump first became interested
in the LDS Church while acting at the Hales’
Glendale Center Theatre as a young man. Jump is
well known from his many television roles, most
famously in WKRP in Cincinnati.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 132
R e v i e w s
LaBute’s “Attempt at
Resurrection”
A review of Neil LaBute’s play The Distance from
Here (New York: Overlook Press, 2003)
Reviewed by R.W. Rasband
T he Distance from Here is the latest installment
in Neil LaBute’s ongoing “Theater of Cruelty”
project. His other plays have dealt with relatively
privileged upper-middle-class protagonists. In this
one he writes about the hardscrabble lives of the
lower-middle and working classes. One of the epi-
graphs is from Kurt Cobain: “Oh well, whatever,
never mind.” And we are in the social and psycho-
logical territory that produced Nirvana and Eminem.
Shattered families, absent fathers, neglectful mothers
and their wretched lovers, illegitimate babies, little
money, foul language, bad food, bad television, bad
music, no books, no hope. The location is probably
Washington State, but if you put cowboy boots on
the characters (and Copenhagen chaw in their lower
lips) it could easily be rural Utah.
In the preface to the published play, LaBute
writes, “I know these guys” from high school,
meaning Darrell, Tim, and Jenn, the teenagers the
play revolves around. (Their constant verbal tic
is a numbed “whatever.”) LaBute probably wrote
the play out of the guilt that can come from social
advantage, although he accurately says that most
of us are just two high-school detentions and one
dead-end job from similar trouble and fate. Why
write about such things? LaBute says:
They make me wish I was a better person
[. . .] to create something even slightly more
beautiful or coherent or illuminating than
the frenzied, scrambled memories. [. . .] The
Distance from Here is some sort of effort on
my part, then, to acknowledge a kind of per-
son I’ve always known well but consciously
and constantly marginalized. I never liked the
way those kids dressed, or the music they lis-
tened to, or the way they talked, so from the
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 beginning they were, in essence, dead to me.
This is my attempt at resurrection.
Note carefully that last word.
Darrell and Tim are a little like Beavis and Butt-
head, only with darker jokes. Jenn is Darrell’s girl-
friend. We gradually become aware that Darrell is
more damaged than the others, more damaged than
anyone suspects. He becomes paranoid and jealous
of Jenn and forces the issue. The play climaxes with
two appalling acts of violence, one only described
and based on an urban legend LaBute first heard in
junior high. The other we see, and it’s so primally
awful it could be the beginning of yet another
urban legend. The play ends with an act of expia-
tion, a literal descent to try, in some way, to restore
some moral order.
Although the odds are heavily against these char-
acters, LaBute is no determinist. They are always
moral agents who rationalize what they do. (Indeed,
I am beginning to think that rationalization is
LaBute’s great subject and theme: how we do it, the
dangers to body and spirit it entails.) The characters
have an inkling that somewhere there is a better
order of things; a couple of times they get a glimpse
of transcendence but are unable to grasp it. This is
a hard play to read and must be even more difficult
to watch. But you come away with something.
I did, however, make the mistake of reading
this play on the same day I finally saw Tim Blake
Nelson’s The Grey Zone on cable TV. That is not a
double feature I would recommend to anyone else,
because of the emotional impact. Nelson’s movie
may be the most graphic, realistic, emotionally
wrenching movie ever made about the Holocaust.
It concerns those few Jews at Auschwitz who were
forced by the Nazis to help with the mass murders
and who eventually rebelled and destroyed some of
the crematoria, at the cost of their own lives. It has
a vastly greater scale of evil than LaBute’s play (judg-
ing one murder against six million isn’t appropriate
or even possible), but it produces a similarly tragic
sense, and a few tentative connections can be made.
A lot of the horror happens when people are grap-
pling with the evil that has already been done to
them, when they are overcome with exhaustion and
Irreantum 133
despair. But in the end, some try to do something
to ameliorate the darkness. Arthur Miller once said,
“It turns out we can do very little in this world. But
it’s very, very important we do that little.”
Pride & Prejudice Succeeds on
Its Own Terms
A review of the movie Pride & Prejudice; screenplay
adaptation by Anne K. Black, Jason Faller, and Kath-
erine Swigert; directed by Andrew Black; distributed
by Excel Entertainment, 2003
Reviewed by Scott Parkin
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see this movie,
a Mormon romantic comedy, set at BYU, based
on a beloved Jane Austen novel, by a director
making his first feature-length film. There were so
many ways it could go wrong, so many chances to
fall short.
I saw it anyway. And I’m glad I did. They pulled
it off. Mostly. This was a fun, entertaining film that
I will be happy to see—and pay for—again.
Obligatory Plot Synopsis
T he plot is well-known to most readers. Elizabeth
is an independent, intelligent, single young
woman in a community where single young women
are expected to marry as soon as they can arrange a
suitable match; at twenty-six and single, she’s well
outside the norm.
The film explores how Elizabeth and her room-
mates Jane, Lydia, and Kitty deal with the colli-
sion of social pressure, the Mormon meat market
at BYU, and a wide variety of approaches to the
fundamental problem of how to find and marry
the man that will help them realize their individual
goals. Elizabeth and Darcy are the marquee couple.
Each of our heroines finds, wonders about, loses
and/or recaptures the assorted objects of their atten-
tions in a series of usually humorous, sometimes
painful, and always revealing events as each learns
more about their counterparts and themselves. To
say more would be to give away the end, but as
this is a feel-good romantic comedy and most of
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
us have probably read Jane Austen, I suspect there
won’t be many surprises.
Quick Review
T
his was a fun movie and one that I heartily
recommend to anyone who likes romantic
comedies. It has personality, wit, and a sense of
humor that will appeal to a fairly wide range of
viewers. Most importantly, it has heart—and that
(along with a modicum of filmmaking talent) is all
you can ask for in a romantic comedy. This movie
supplies both in generous quantities.
Short recommendation: See it if you’re inclined
to like romantic comedies. It has some rough spots
and a huge death wish scene, but in the end it ful-
fills its promise to me as a viewer and succeeds on
its own terms.
Two Films in One
T he second half of this film is nearly perfect;
the first half nearly drove me from the theater.
Separating the two halves: the dreaded death wish
scene.
The first half of this film absolutely dragged as it
tried to establish both its own personality and those
of its characters. I think it fell very much short on
both counts.
The key to a romantic comedy is that you need
to like the main characters. Yes, they’re flawed and
relatively obnoxious. Yes, they’re usually more than
a little self-absorbed and often arrogant about their
own romantic value. But they need to be funda-
mentally likable, or there’s no one to root for.
I didn’t like either Elizabeth or Darcy when they
were first introduced. Elizabeth was just as quick to
judge, mock, or condescend as Darcy was. I thought
she was particularly cruel to Collins, and her behav-
ior at the party seemed as self-centered to me as
Darcy’s was. It took me until well after the halfway
point before I began to find anything appealing
about her beyond the Barbie factor and the fact that
she was clearly supposed to be the good guy.
Darcy was simply mean. His rapid judgments
and public attempts to injure people (including
Elizabeth at the beginning) put him past the point
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 134
of merely abrupt or direct and well into the unfor-
givably nasty category, for me. To make it worse,
Elizabeth herself casts a shadow on him that I don’t
think is ever dispelled. When asked why she doesn’t
like him when he seems to be quite charming with
his rich friends, Elizabeth says something to the
effect of “Anyone can be charming for their friends;
it’s how they treat strangers that reveals their true
nature.” And Darcy spends the first thirty minutes
of this film being an absolute jerk to strangers.
Then the death wish scene happens, where both
Elizabeth and Jane go to pieces because they’ve
each lost their respective boyfriends. They spend
a week in a full-blown orgy of excessive ice cream,
pizza, and poor housekeeping, which makes both
of them seem far from the intelligent, self-assured
heroines they were alleged to be at the start.
After they’re pulled out of self-pity by their
friends, the film moves quickly through a series of
well-handled, punchy scenes that firmly establish
everyone’s good (and bad) points and move strongly
toward a climax where the stakes are high, the
motivations are pure, and there’s finally someone
to cheer for.
It’s almost as if you saw the film’s producers
gaining in confidence as they went. At the start,
it seemed hesitant and unsure of its own identity;
by the end it had moved firmly—and success-
fully—into being a strong romantic comedy.
Intrusions
I thought there were too many intrusions into
the story by the filmmakers. The epigrams with
quotes from the novel (complete with chapter and
verse) wore on me after the first few, and the stop-
action photography every time someone drove
somewhere just annoyed me. I know—it’s a way
of showing that this is a fun, light-hearted film.
For me it was intrusive and broke the illusion of
the film.
Which is not to say that I thought it should all
be taken out—far from it. I thought the little Mit-
tyesque daydreams were clever, funny, and reveal-
ing. The epigrams were great when they were the
only intrusions on the film’s movement. But for
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me the first half of the movie was damaged by too
many of these kinds of intrusions. Too much wink-
ing and nudging, and not quite enough story.
A Latter-Day Comedy?
T his film bills itself as a “latter-day comedy,”
and I’m not quite sure why. I accept the idea
that modern Mormon social pressure to marry maps
well to Austen’s 1800s British society, but for me
that connection was simple window dressing that
never really played out in the action. Yes, Collins
is a caricature of the socially retarded R.M. who
tries to use scripture and the Ensign to spiritually
browbeat women into marrying him, while jotting
down his goals in his planner.
But beyond these Provo/Utah/Mormon in-jokes,
I didn’t see anything particularly Mormon about
how the characters interacted, how the plot devel-
oped, or how the jeopardy escalated. It was a straight,
mainstream-style romantic comedy that had to
pick a backdrop and happened to use Provo/BYU.
It could have been set anywhere, for all the use it
made of specifically Mormon themes or situations.
Which is not a criticism of the film. I don’t
particularly care whether it contained Mormon
elements or not; it worked as a romantic comedy,
and that’s all I can ask for. But when the filmmak-
ers subtitle it “a latter-day comedy,” they make a
promise to me as a viewer. I don’t think they fol-
lowed through on that promise. What I can’t figure
out is why they even made the claim, or why they
shoehorned in a couple of Mormon in-jokes to
validate the claim.
Reiteration: See It
T his film has a fair number of evident flaws,
but none of those things were critical (though
a scene near the end where Las Vegas police cars
have the words Provo Police clearly visible on their
doors made me laugh out loud). Sure, these little
flaws annoyed me to varying degrees, but this film’s
strengths far overshadow its occasional weaknesses.
In the end, this film succeeds on its own terms.
Some of the cinematography is very nice, the
editing seems to get better as the film goes along
Irreantum
(though the sound is pretty weak throughout), and
the writing is strong once it stops setting things
up and just tells the story. Sure, there were some
intrusions that I thought broke the illusion, but the
overall effect was of seeing a solid, young filmmaker
whose talent evolved literally before our eyes.
This was a fun film. See it. But more impor-
tantly, pay attention to Andrew Black as a film-
maker. He’s got the talent, and he’s not afraid to
take a few chances. He’s earned my trust, my loy-
alty, and my ongoing interest with this very solid
first feature film.
Not about Mormons
A review of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America
Reviewed by Jonathan Langford
A bout a year ago, I was engaged in an online
conversation with a friend of mine (not LDS)
who teaches a university course about sexuality and
textuality. Have you, he asked, seen Angels in Amer-
ica, which has several Mormon characters? I’ve read
about it, said I, but never actually read or seen it.
And so I read the play (actually two plays in
one, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika) and
was duly impressed with its craft and competence.
Yet despite the deft and interesting use of Mormon
elements and characters in the play, I ended the
experience without much sense of intersection with
my own sense of the experience of Mormonism.
And there is, I think, a good reason for that.
Recently adapted as an HBO film, Angels in
America, as I see it, is not really about Mormonism
at all. That is to say, even though it uses symbols
from Mormon history and theology and features
Mormon characters, it’s not about what it means
to be Mormon, even Mormon and gay. Similarly,
it’s not about Mormon beliefs or how those beliefs
intersect with other ideas and belief systems within
the play, such as Marxist approaches to class.
Mormon Characters
W hen it comes to his characters, it seems to me
that Kushner is using Mormons iconically—
135 Winter 2003/Spring 2004
a rather different thing from presenting them
realistically. Not that his Mormon characters aren’t
realistic, but I don’t think they’re realistic in their
Mormonness. By and large, they don’t act like Mor-
mons, they don’t describe their beliefs in terms that
would be terribly familiar to most Mormons, and
their religion doesn’t seem to impact their day-to-
day lives in the ways that it does for most active
Mormons.
The characters don’t seem much affected by
Mormonism socially. There are no callings, no home
teachers. When Joe’s mother arrives in New York,
worried about Joe, and is not met by him at the air-
port, she doesn’t call his bishop, doesn’t call on local
church members. Instead, she wanders around and
eventually asks directions to the Mormon visitors’
center, which becomes from then on the locus of all
things Mormon in the play—as if the connection
of Mormons to their religion and each other is best
represented through movies and mannequins.
It probably fits Kushner’s purposes to have his
Mormon characters disconnected and isolated;
but, even though members of the church may feel
isolated internally, if they are active members of
the church they will, in fact, be part of a commu-
nity, whether they feel at home there or not. Being
Mormon is like being a member of a close extended
family: you really can’t rid yourself of people ask-
ing how you’re doing and coming over and visiting
and such, unless you make an active effort to push
them away (and often not even then). None of this
is evident in the play.
Similarly, Joe’s internal anguish—the struggle to
repress his homosexual feelings, and their conflict
with his religious values—seems well drawn to me,
but also generic. They’re the sort of feelings that
anyone from a sexually restrictive religion might
possess. But if you’re Mormon, being part of a fam-
ily is more than just a badge of normality; it’s part
of your essential purpose for existing, a key element
of your eternal identity. Surely part of what makes
being Mormon and gay so poignant is the sense that
choosing a life of homosexuality isn’t just a sin; it’s
also giving up who you are and what you are meant
to be as a child of God. That added dimension of
inner conflict and loss could well be incorporated
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 136
into a play that was about what it means to be
Mormon and gay; but that isn’t this play.
Mormon Themes and Ideas
W hen it comes to the historical and symbolic
references to Mormonism (e.g., angels, ele-
ments of the Joseph Smith story), my sense is that
Kushner uses these elements mythically and poeti-
cally, partly as a distillation of a particular type of
idea of what it means to be American. They tie into
Kushner’s structure of ideas—but the meanings
Kushner gives them make them more a riff than
a representation of what those elements mean to
Mormons.
Thus, for example, his play has angels coming to
earth with a modern message. Their message (that
humans should stop moving around and changing
things so much, so that maybe God will find his
way back to heaven) may reflect Kushner’s take on
religion in general, at least conservative religions
like (as most people see it) Mormonism. But in the
end, his take has little or nothing to do with the
message of the Restoration. It’s not even a terribly
effective critique of that message. Nor, I think, is it
particularly meant to be.
My friend made the comment that he thought
Kushner had some important things to say about
religion and sexuality in Angels in America. Well,
maybe. But the (theoretical) Mormon take on sexu-
ality is actually radically different from that of most
religions, at least most contemporary Christian reli-
gions, making that critique (in my view) somewhat
off base for Mormonism.
It’s possible that part of what attracted Kushner
about using Mormonism was an awareness of the
tension between Mormon doctrine, which makes
sexuality an attribute of divinity, and Mormon prac-
tice, which is pretty repressive on the subject of sex.
His angels, for example, prompt intensely sexual
reactions. I suspect that if Kushner knew much about
Mormon theology (which he may well—I under-
stand that he did study Mormonism before writing
the play), he may have felt it was particularly appro-
priate/ironic to make the stereotypically repressed
closeted gay be from a religion that theoretically
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accepts and even embraces sexuality but that cul-
turally is (as he would see it) just as repressive as
any other religion. But none of that irony comes
out in the play—nor could it, since Mormon ideas
about sexuality are not portrayed as in any way
different from, say, Baptist teachings. Similarly,
there’s no engagement with the peculiarly Mormon
ideas that make homosexuality not merely a sin but
also an eternal dead end. The strikingly heretical
Mormon idea of humans becoming gods doesn’t
get mentioned. In short, there’s no engagement (as
I see it) with the ideas of Mormonism, as opposed
to its symbols.
Poor Old Joe
W hich brings me to the aspect of the play that
I found most puzzling: that is, the rather
stern judgment that is made of Joe, the closeted gay
Mormon who leaves his wife to come out over the
course of the play. While most of the major charac-
ters—including Joe’s ambiguously Mormon mother
Hannah—become part of a community that is cre-
ated by the end of the second play, Joe is sent off,
and we hear no more about him. Even Roy Cohn,
the embodiment of evil in this play, has the Kad-
dish said over him by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.
But Joe is alone, left with his wife’s command to
“Go exploring.”
It’s unclear to me exactly why. His coming-out
scene with his wife Harper is paired with the scene
where Louis leaves his lover, who is dying of AIDS,
because he can’t handle his sickness. And yet the
two cases seem hardly equivalent. It is (at least
arguably) Harper who rejects Joe, Harper whose
dream-images of terrifying men with knives are
revealed as symbols of her feelings about her hus-
band. By Kushner’s own ideology, it would seem
logical that accepting his homosexual feelings would
be a step forward for Joe, not an act on the same
level of moral bankruptcy as abandoning a termi-
nally ill partner. And yet in the end, Louis is allowed
to return to the others, while Joe is cast out.
At first, I wondered if the message was sim-
ply that for someone who has been what Joe has
been—a writer of repressive court decisions for
Irreantum 137
conservative judges—there is no forgiveness. Eventu-
ally, I decided that probably wasn’t the case, though
it’s hard for me to tell what it might mean instead.
The best I was able to speculate was that perhaps
the problem is that Joe is trying for a superficial
transformation—changing one skin, one identity,
for another—when true change comes at a higher
cost and takes longer than that.
Which brings me to the notorious garment-
stripping scene, where Joe responds to Louis’s
shocked rejection of him when he discovers Joe is
Mormon by stripping off his clothes and (specifi-
cally) his garments, stating, “Whatever you want.
I can give up anything. My skin.” One can’t help
but wonder: Why is Joe still wearing them, any-
way? and, Is Louis really so unobservant that after
a month together, it still hasn’t occurred to him to
ask Joe about his “fruity underwear”? At a more
substantive level, one must admit the justice of
Louis’s challenge: “How can you stop wearing it if
it’s a skin?”
Symbolically, the scene works. In fact, I think
that for myself as a Mormon, it may work better
than it does for most members of the play’s audi-
ence and better than it’s meant to—because, to me,
it represents a very real price Joe has paid. Not a
sign of shallowness, but of profound pain.
This is not to say that Joe is completely sym-
pathetic. In fact, over the course of the play, Joe’s
character becomes, in my view, considerably less
attractive. He turns into a mouthpiece of Roy
Cohn’s philosophy (which sounds considerably
less convincing from him than from Cohn) and in
general seems to have lost his prior identity without
yet having anything to replace it. So perhaps it is
fitting that he be left to wander on his own until he
has discovered or decided who he is going to be.
In a way, it’s comforting that in Kushner’s world,
being gay—even acknowledging your gayness—
isn’t enough to make you one of the good guys.
Conversely, being Mormon isn’t enough to damn
you, as the example of Hannah—one of the most
consistently positive characters in the play—shows.
On the other hand, Kushner’s political judgments
have nothing of gray about them: issues are black
and white, right and wrong are clearly known, and,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
while Kushner may undercut his characters’ cer-
tainties, he never seems to doubt his own. His
endorsement of difference may embrace quaint
middle-aged ladies who believe in angels but does
not really extend to serious consideration of ideas
that are different from his. Mormonism, conserva-
tism—neither is really allowed a presence or voice
in the play, despite their constant conjuration. It
is no dialogue that the play presents, but rather a
carefully scripted set of calls and responses.
Angels in America is an interesting and well-
written work. Possibly even brilliant, although I
suspect that those who don’t share Kushner’s beliefs
and prejudices will find less in it than those who
do. It’s an important work, from the perspective
of Mormon letters. But not, ultimately—in my
view—one that has much specifically to say to, for,
or about Mormons.
Jonathan Langford is a freelance writer and editor
and part-time teacher of college freshman composi-
tion. He moderates AML-List, an e-mail list about
Mormon literature.
Not-So-Divine Womanhood
A review of Veda Hale’s Ragged Circle (Cedar Fort,
2003)
Reviewed by Melody Warnick
S ome people just seem to attract trouble. You
know the type: the Relief Society president/
cancer survivor/double amputee whose husband
has left her, whose house is on the verge of being
repossessed, and whose youngest son is serving jail
time for the armed robbery of the local Circle K.
They’re the kind of semiprofessional martyrs who
make your own household dramas—a spoon got
caught in the garbage disposal! you have an overdue
fine at the library!—look pathetic. While Malena
Gould, the protagonist of Ragged Circle, may not
be precisely a modern-day Job, she has enough
trauma in her life to make you feel fairly good
about your own minor mishaps.
Forty-year-old Malena lives in a refurbished
church house in rural Utah with her artist hus-
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 138
band, Garret, and a gaggle of eight kids ranging in
age from twenty years to thirteen months. But the
Partridge Family this isn’t. Malena’s pregnant with
her ninth child, which fact alone should get your
sympathy flowing—and inspire no small admira-
tion for first-time novelist Hale’s moxie in intro-
ducing enough characters to keep Dickens on his
toes. While Garret hobnobs with gallery owners,
Malena rues that her own artistic talents have been
left dormant because “too much talk against birth
control at church and . . . a body that conceived
easily” keeps Malena baby-bound, with “one every
two years like elections.”
Malena tries desperately to rule the roost through
a difficult pregnancy, until fifteen-year-old Aimee,
who wants to be a rock star but is far more con-
vincing as the teenager from hell, runs away with
Blacky, a scary local boy. Once they track her
down, Malena and Garret put Aimee under a vir-
tual house arrest and then sit around wondering
where they went wrong:
So what was it with her family? Would
more money help? Certainly. More discipline?
More religion? More consistency? A more
conventional mother and father? Yes, prob-
ably all of that.
[Malena] shook her head and placed her
hand on Kenny’s bright head. Raymond’s indif-
ference, Aimee’s rebellion, Fielding’s unasser-
tiveness, Carl’s belligerence, Nola’s directness,
Julie’s hyper-sensitivity and imaginary com-
panions, Jill’s awful too frequent crying and
whining, and herself, feeling old, tired, resent-
ful, letting discontentment leak into every-
thing. (4–5)
Seeing the belligerent Aimee interact—Aimee
says “It’s not fair!” a lot, Malena fights the urge to
slap the girl around—leaves you wondering how
they survived in the same house for so long.
Of course, Shakespeare wrote, “When sorrows
come they come not single spies but in battalions,”
so Garret, who may or may not be having an affair
with an attractive arts patron, gets called as their
ward’s new bishop; Malena develops mysterious
Irreantum
blood clots that force her into bed rest for the last
few months of her pregnancy; and Aimee sneaks
away from a stake youth conference to rejoin
the ominous Blacky. At that point most normal
humans would cease to function, and Malena
does too, to a point. She lets Reba, her puritanical
visiting teacher, take over the running of the house-
hold. And when Aimee shows up to fetch a hidden
suitcase, Malena passively grants permission for her
to marry Blacky, then spends much time trying to
divine whether her daughter is pregnant or not.
All this trauma implies a Job-like faithfulness,
but Malena’s not as insipid as you’d expect. She’s
honest about the many failings of her family. She’s
also feisty, chafing against church members who
gush about the Goulds’ nine “sweet spirits” and
lashing out at the errant Aimee with a barely con-
tained rage. It’s enough to make you like her, then
hate her, then like her again—but happily, you care
about her and her life. Unlike the heroines of too
many LDS novels, Malena feels like a real woman,
dealing with her trials in an all-too-human way.
One of Malena’s issues is her womanhood, a
major theme in the novel. In her never-ending
struggle to outwit, outplay, and outlast, Malena has
come to despise being a woman, which is what got
her into this mess in the first place. In the first few
plodding chapters of back story, Malena vents about
the total absorption of her life into motherhood,
wifedom, and church service, and she tries to figure
out a way to create more balance and redevelop her
long-ignored artistic talents—a challenge for most
Latter-day Saint women, even the ones who don’t
have nine kids. She explains to Garret,
“I’ve not been happy for quite a while. I sup-
pose I go about my duties as wife and mother
as if they’re some kind of sentence placed on
me. And yet I didn’t used to feel that. When
my father was alive he treated me as if little
girls were all right, wonderful in fact. I don’t
know how I changed and got sorry about
being female. . . . Inside I started out feeling
important enough. But I just can’t do every-
thing I should. And maybe my role seems
dull, especially compared to yours.” (90)
Irreantum 139
In the end, Malena finds balance only when she’s
forced to by her illness. Bed-ridden, she begins
sketching again, turns Aimee’s life over to God, and
reconnects with her husband.
Ragged Circle surprised me with the power of its
emotion. Sometimes overwrought—a scene describ-
ing Malena’s out-of-body experience as she gives
birth to her baby reads like a new-age guide to
becoming one with the universe—the novel nev-
ertheless drew me in and forced me to care about
Malena, Garret, even Aimee. Although Malena can
be frustrating in her mishandling of her own prob-
lems, there’s something comforting in the imper-
fection of a bishop’s wife who seems at times to
be failing miserably at motherhood. And that, the
back-cover blurb tells us, is the point: “For women
who may struggle to feel fulfillment as a wife and
mother, here is a bone-deep story that not only tells
it like it really is, but assures every family-exhausted
woman that she is not alone.”
And if Malena’s litany of tribulations provides no
comfort, treat Ragged Circle as a “Scared Straight”
for young mothers. Watching Malena navigate the
tempestuous emotional waters of her nine children
could be instant birth control for some.
Melody Warnick is a freelance writer and editor. She
lives in St. George, Utah, with her husband, Quinn,
and daughter, Ella, and has no intention of ever hav-
ing nine children.
A Black Mormon’s Memoir
A review of What Matters Most: A Story of Human
Potential, an autobiography of Darron Terry Smith,
with Susan Evans McCloud (Salt Lake City: Scribe
Publishing, 1999)
Reviewed by Henry Miles
W hat Matters Most stars Darron Smith, a physi-
cian assistant, who has put his practice on
hold while he completes a Ph.D. at the University
of Utah. He entered my life at the 2003 Sunstone
Symposium in the session on race and the church,
where I learned he is a Mormon convert; he now
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
lives in Utah, and the book covers his life. Darron’s
presentation was sensitive and frank and left me
wanting to share in his church experience. After
the session I bought his book, hoping to learn how
he navigated his way in a white church, especially
in Utah. Reading the book gave me the desire to
make it known to others, to volunteer to review it
for Irreantum. My interest stems from my limited
experience with minorities, which I will briefly
relate, and the need I see for most of us Latter-day
Saints to educate ourselves about the impact of
our language, actions, and beliefs on minorities.
I grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho, and the first black
person I ever saw was in a five-and-dime store in
Idaho Falls as a preschooler, shopping with Mother.
She said, “Stop staring.” This was about 1940. Ten
years later I saw two black men walking through
town on a Saturday night, but, as far as I know, no
blacks lived in Blackfoot at that time. Early in the
sixties, I took a job in Washington, D.C., and began
working with Glen Roane and learning about blacks.
Glen had received a degree in biology, served as an
army officer in Korea, and returned and studied
law. This bright black man graduated, but he did
not practice law right away; he ended up working
as a carpenter until civil rights legislation decreased
discrimination and enabled more blacks to com-
pete for professional positions.
During this time, a delegation from the Black-
foot Chamber of Commerce visited our nation’s
capitol. I recall the consternation I felt on hearing
one of them use the N-word. A lifetime friend,
Delwin, who was a year ahead of me in school and
temple married, had become the jovial owner of
a grocery store. In using the N-word, he did not
intend to be mean; he had not yet learned the
meaning this word conveyed outside of our small
and isolated interpretative community.
One night, Glen and I met at the stadium in
D.C. to watch the Senators play, and afterward he
invited me to stop by his home. Instead of going
into his house after stepping from our cars, he
walked me around the block, saying, “Now, why
can’t we live in the suburbs?” as we viewed by
streetlights the manicured yards and pruned trees
of his black neighbors. Inside his home, he tossed
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 140
his baby into my arms, and maybe I appeared to
cuddle the baby in stride but I had never touched a
black baby before. Holding the baby set off feelings
I cannot describe and have never mentioned before.
The situation embarrassed me.
I changed jobs and left Glen, but he had influ-
enced me, so a few years later a friend and I were
gathering signatures for open housing in northern
Virginia. At one house a familiar face opened the
door, a member of my elders quorum. He was sur-
prised at me, would not sign my petition, and said
the church was against open housing. I suggested he
talk with Apostle Hugh B. Brown. Time passed, and
I was standing near the curb watching the parade of
Martin Luther King Jr. approach, when someone
ran from the parade toward me. It was Glen Roane,
and he invited me to join the parade. I shook hands
with King and other civil rights leaders and then
started marching arm in arm with them.
A couple of years ago, the wife of a family I
home-teach related her reaction to a Hispanic man
who stopped to help her when her car quit running
near Geneva Road in Orem. He pulled up the hood,
and while he was busy ferreting out the problem,
she was standing and fearing what he might do to
her. When a white jogger happened by, the lady
took him aside and asked him to please remain
until the Hispanic left. This lady does not react
with distrust toward the two Hispanic families in
our ward, which makes me hope the church con-
text is enabling her and all of us to trust the “other.”
I end this background for my book review by
summarizing an incredible anecdote. This event
took place in Utah and may appear in a forthcom-
ing book of personal essays by an LDS publisher.
A black, female law professor saw an opportunity
to assist a large family in her ward to make a long
trip east, help them endure, even enjoy the trip.
The lady had just purchased a new minivan, the
larger size, loaded with accessories, maybe a built-
in TV, and she deemed it a small sacrifice for her to
exchange minivans with the family for a few weeks.
On the day to exchange vehicles, the lady drove
into the family’s yard in her just-detailed and shiny
minivan. She gave her keys to the head of the fam-
ily, and then they walked from the house into the
Irreantum
backyard. They walked past the parked minivan
the lady thought she was to use and on to another
minivan: a backup vehicle, not driven regularly, one
chickens roosted in, and, as I recall, had roosted in
the previous night. To her credit, she still made the
trade. I stopped reading, and feeling incensed and
puzzled, I wondered if Jesus would have done what
she did.
The above experiences, plus our legacy of blacks
and the priesthood, the recent English language ini-
tiative in Utah, letters to the editor in local papers
regarding immigrants, and so on leave me seeing
the church’s most pressing problem as educating
us regarding minorities. I wonder when a Mormon
author will write the reaction of Utah members to
the first church president who is black and who
speaks English through an interpreter. I believe the
most effective way to sensitize us to the experience
of minorities right now is reading their experience
in such books as What Matters Most.
I found What Matters Most well written and
engaging. Although Susan Evans McCloud’s name
appears on the front of the book, I began thinking
of her only after reading the book and the high
praise Darron gives her in the acknowledgement
section at the end. Having a fiction writer for a col-
laborator no doubt forced Darron into providing
the rich detail that, much of the time, shows rather
than tells his story. And friends encouraged him to
write his experience, reviewed his manuscript, and
offered advice. The book demonstrates the success
of this writing process. Readers see Darron able
to write his life from two perspectives: (1) a child
growing up feeling neglected by his mother and
judging her harshly, and (2) a man looking back
who has pondered his past and become aware of
the difficult context of his mother’s life. Empathy
enables him to begin the book: “My story [. . .]
is a familiar one [. . .] at least in its beginnings: A
charming but unreliable father, addicted to alcohol
and unfaithful to his wife. A heartbroken, bitter,
overworked mother. [. . .] What makes my story
worth telling [. . . is] how, by the grace of God and
the help of good people [. . .] I made the journey
[. . .] to find a life worth living.”
Irreantum 141
Although Darron is the star of this memoir, he
recalls good people who helped him along his jour-
ney to find a life worth living. And in doing this, I
believe he mentions the names of the participants
of every anecdote related and how each event made
him feel. These are people who bring structure or
hope into his life. At his maternal grandparents’,
for example, he brushes with normality, has “meals
and bed at a set time, a real breakfast in the morn-
ing before school, church every Sunday.” This
experience gave Darron a sense of security not
found at home.
Roy is the first white kid to associate with him.
Both are hooked on karate, and Darron is invited
to practice in Roy’s yard but not invited inside his
house. During the Roy story, boys call Darron a
“nigger,” a word he had not heard. He asks his
grandmother the meaning, and she explains racism
in Nashville. He does not believe her and goes to
Roy and learns the cost of Roy’s friendship. Roy’s
father does not want him to be friends with Dar-
ron. Roy says, “He doesn’t like black people,” leav-
ing Darron feeling confused about who he is, to be
disliked by someone who does not know him. At
the same time, he becomes aware of the differences
among whites, as Roy remains his friend despite
opposition.
He is about thirteen when Mormon missionaries
open a door on strange ideas, and, as in all events
involving him, Darron’s mother shows no inter-
est, which response has come to aggravate him.
His mother does invite the missionaries to dinner.
His grandmother, however, is scandalized upon
learning of this religious interest and warns against
further contacts. Darron follows his feelings. At
church he sees a man cry for the first time, a man
he knows to be strong. He learns it’s okay for a
strong man to cry. The day of his baptism is one
day of oneness with his mother and the day his
life took on meaning, but, attending an all-white
church, he faces new trials and relates them in rich
complexity.
Darron reports no prejudice at church in his
Nashville Ward. They fellowship him effectively,
like we expect of branches and wards in the mission
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
field. Darron’s attendance wanes until Bishop Love
and seven young men call at his door on a Sunday
morning and ask to have priesthood meeting at his
house.
Upon graduating from high school, he goes to
Idaho to attend Ricks College and visits Matt, who
served a mission in Tennessee. Matt’s little brother
asks if he can rub Darron’s skin; he wants to rub off
the black. Everyone laughs, but Darron’s is forced.
He lives one year among good people who could
never imagine his pain from being so different
from them, from being a sideshow of sorts. But the
pain also causes him to learn patience and to adjust
and grow.
Back in Tennessee again, as Darron is working
as a karate instructor for children and considering
a karate school of his own, Jerry suggests a mission.
Although six years had passed since his baptism,
the idea is a surprise and not interesting, so Jerry
suggests he pray about it. Personal prayer is new
too; Darron had only given prayers at church. His
prayer is simple and sincere: “Heavenly Father,
please let me know if a mission is what I should
do. I love my job and would miss it terribly. But
if you’ll let me know, I’ll do what you want me to
do.” He receives an answer he cannot deny: serve a
mission. Darron relates the struggle with his mis-
sion decision, with leaving Mr. Hardin, who offers
to help him into his own karate school, and with
leaving children he loves.
While Darron is serving his mission, African-
American students at Western Michigan University
force him to confront the priesthood issue. He says:
I was hoping Elder Poulson would offer
some insight, but he looked at me as if I had
the answers. I had suppressed this painful legacy
of the Church for several years, never know-
ing that I would be frequently challenged on
its validity. So I awkwardly told these men
that apparently the Lord had put a curse on
Ham with black skin, which had something
to do with blacks being denied the priesthood
in the pre-existence.
My questioners looked at each other and
laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me, brother.
You can’t honestly believe this?”
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 142
The question truly dumbfounded me, but
I resolved to come to terms with it. Why was
I persistently defending something that I knew
so little about? And how would other African-
Americans receive an explanation which to them
must have appeared super racist in nature?
I would search and search and re-search for
some resolution, which would only come
much later in my life. And for the time being,
I would continue to pray for strength and
answers and take it one individual at a time.
(208)
Years later, as an adult in Utah, Darron faces
racial prejudice: a patient at the clinic is displeased
at being served by a black physician assistant. In
time she overcomes her displeasure, becomes his
regular patient, and asks Darron, “Do you like
being in Utah?” and “Do you find prejudice in
the valley?” Darron responds, “I have encountered
some prejudice, but only when it came to dating.
Many people in Utah, as anywhere in the United
States, are in denial of prejudice. It only hits home
when your son or daughter brings a person to din-
ner of another race, and—heaven forbid—might
want to marry them” (275).
This book brings to mind Elder Maxwell’s inter-
view on public television a few years ago when he
mentioned looking back on our lives and finding
pattern and purpose in what seemed chaos in the day-
to-day living of it. Darron set out to find a life worth
living. Without an actual count, I think he included
more whites than blacks among the good people who
helped him, and I detected no whining.
At the end of this book, Darron is in his thir-
ties and finishing his physician assistant program.
He has settled in Utah, and surely his unique
experiences of being black in a white church are
continuing. As I finished the book and as I finish
this review of it, I am hoping Darron will write a
sequel covering the years since What Matters Most.
Henry Miles retired from the foreign service into a
graduate writing program at George Mason Uni-
versity in Virginia, completing his degree at BYU in
1994 with Darrell Spencer as his thesis chair. Henry
works infrequently as a freelance editor and spends
Irreantum
most of his writing time on family narratives and per-
sonal essays. He has published in Dialogue, Wasatch
Review International, and IRREANTUM and believes
he has proofread all issues of the latter. He served a
term as treasurer of the AML. Henry and Carol live
in Orem, Utah, and have five children and nineteen
grandchildren scattered from Virginia to Utah.
A Good, Fun Story of
Romantic Trials
A review of Tamra Norton’s Molly Married? (Bonne-
ville Books, 2003)
Reviewed by Katie Parker
A few chapters into this book, I considered
putting it down and never opening it again.
Molly’s loftiest goal was apparently to win a mar-
riage proposal from her handsome, newly returned
missionary boyfriend from high school, Brandon
Mace. It bothered me that the author was apparently
promoting this fairytale mindset, making everything
rosy for the couple and clearly preparing them to
ride off into the sunset to their castle in the clouds to
live happily ever after in their superficial relationship,
with only a few contrived problems to postpone this
joyous event until the end of the book.
I mention this because if you experience similar
feelings as you read the book, I have some advice
for you: Keep reading. I continued on, partly because
I get a kind of perverse pleasure from reading books
that I think I could have written better myself.
And I read long enough to discover that my initial
assessment of the story was completely wrong. I
never, ever should have underestimated Tamra
Norton’s ability to plot this story. The book ended
up a complete delight to read, and Molly’s story
progresses so subtly and naturally that I, like Molly,
was surprised at the turn of events. I won’t spoil the
book here for the reader, because it’s so much fun
to discover things as they happen, but it does drive
home the point that our lives don’t always work out
the way we plan.
The preaching and sweet solutions of the last
book (Molly Mormon?) are greatly decreased here,
Irreantum 143
but remaining is Molly’s offbeat sense of humor as
she describes her life. Here are a couple of examples:
“‘Hey, Molly, let’s go sit over on one of those rocks
so we can get a better view.’ Brandon reached for
my hand to lead me along, when I suddenly real-
ized he had pressed my hand to his mouth. I wasn’t
sure if he was going to wipe his pink nose on my
sleeve or kiss my hand—I was hoping for the lat-
ter” (81). “And why did I feel so flustered [. . .] ?
At the moment I wanted to slide under the table
and curl into a little ball. Unfortunately, I wasn’t an
armadillo and it wasn’t an option” (104).
Molly’s ballroom dance partner, Gordon the
Goofball, is a hoot and becomes quite endearing.
On a more serious note, Molly’s cousin who got
pregnant and put her baby up for adoption in
the last book spends much of this book feeling
unworthy to let any returned missionary even look
at her, let alone develop an interest in her. This is
remedied perhaps a bit too easily in the end, but
it’s good to see residual consequences of sin that
linger even after full repentance. Sometimes I think
we get the idea that once repentance has occurred,
everything is fixed and the consequences should
all be gone as well, so aftereffects such as these are
worth exploring.
The story includes a few roommate issues and
other fun aspects of college life, though the focus
remains on Molly’s romantic trials. My only real
complaint about the book is that many of the girls
in the story are engaged, if not married, by about
age twenty, and they take the plunge after only a
few good dates. They’re really pretty young and
naïve to be taking such a serious step. But, come to
think of it, I got engaged myself at about that time
in my life, and so did several of my friends. Maybe
I shouldn’t be complaining. Maybe I’m just getting
old.
I’m sure I would have loved this book as a teen-
ager, had it been around then. It’s a near-perfect
example of the kind of thing I was looking for at
that time. It’s not preachy (not very, anyway), it
doesn’t have a didactic agenda to promote, and the
plot isn’t manipulated into anything unbelievable.
And nothing is portrayed or promoted outside of
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
LDS standards. It’s just a good, fun story about
what life can really be like for an LDS college girl.
Really.
Katie Parker graduated with a BA from the Univer-
sity of Oklahoma. She currently lives in Salt Lake
City with her husband and son, where she works as
an editor. Her work has appeared in the New Era
and Westview.
Dr. Anthony Strikes Again
A review of Carl B. Andersen’s The Hidden Path,
Book of Mormon Sleuth 3 (Deseret Book, 2003)
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
T he Hidden Path is the third volume in Ander-
sen’s popular Book of Mormon Sleuth series. It
continues the adventures of the Andrews family,
in particular their bright and courageous children.
The series is aimed toward the younger generation.
The first entry in the series introduced us to the
Andrews clan, a Latter-day Saint family strong in
faith and devotion to the church. The plot involved
a Dr. Anthony, an evil man out to steal a rare edi-
tion of the Book of Mormon owned by an aunt
of the Andrews children. He is ultimately appre-
hended and imprisoned. The story was well written
and cleverly crafted.
The second book takes an entirely different
course. The family is awarded a free Alaskan cruise,
but things go horribly bad, and they end up in a
strange land when their airplane crash-lands in a
remote region, where they meet up with a “lost
tribe,” befriending many of them and leaving
copies of the Book of Mormon with their leaders.
Their airplane, piloted by a man named John, spills
fuel onto a salt flat. Salt is central to the life and
primitive worship of these people; the loss of the
salt gives rise to anger and resentment.
The third volume follows from the second. A
year has passed since their adventure described in
the second book. The company that awarded the
first trip has given them another opportunity to
enjoy a vacation aboard an Alaskan cruise ship.
On the eve of the journey, several of the children
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 144
wander to the pier to take a look at the ship, and
they meet up with John, the pilot from their previ-
ous adventure. He explains that a team had volun-
teered to bring supplies of salt to the “lost people,”
after having inadvertently ruined their salt supply
on their last visit. The children, curious to learn
about this effort, board the vessel.
But things go horribly wrong. One of the men
involved in this delivery mission is none other than
Dr. Anthony, the villain of the first volume, who
was released from prison due to a technicality. The
children run and hide, not wanting to be spotted
by the evil man, and as a result find themselves
trapped on a luxury yacht. Before they know it,
they’re on their way back to the land of their pre-
vious adventure, leaving behind their hapless and
worried parents.
If it all seems a bit contrived, one need only
think back to the old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew
stories. Read from a child’s point of view, they were
exciting and entertaining. Contrived plots never
seemed to bother us when we were children. And,
to be honest, they don’t bother many adults these
days, either. When one is reading fiction, one is
helped by suspending rational powers, leaving the
reader to just enjoy the story.
And when it comes to exciting stories for young
people, this book is the real deal. I was somewhat
critical of the second book, feeling that it lacked
some of the coherence and imagination of the first
book. Happily, Andersen is back on track with
this third entry, telling a story that stays on track,
knows where it’s going, and draws the reader into
the intrigue. His characters are more fully fleshed
out, and the story line is more consistent.
As the story progresses, Andersen takes the time
to draw from the scriptures, showing how their
teachings are pivotal in the children’s survival.
And one cannot help but be impressed with how
the “lost tribe,” under the tutelage of the Book of
Mormon, develops a system of ethics and Christian
values that would be welcome in any setting.
Drawing on two previous volumes, it would
have been easy for Andersen to leave the new reader
behind. But he is careful to retell those parts of
the previous stories that are relevant to the current
story line. This was very helpful.
Irreantum
 I do have two comments. First, in a narrative
beginning on page sixty-nine, there is a touch-and-
go, and not entirely accurate, discussion of Roman
Catholicism. It goes on for several pages, and when
you’re done, you believe the following: the Catholics
don’t think that Mormons are Christian. But how
can this be, since we both believe in the New Tes-
tament? Yeah, but the Catholics add a lot of stuff
that’s not scriptural. But we add stuff, too. Yeah,
but we add it by inspiration. Leaving aside the
simplistic nature of this dialogue, I couldn’t figure
how it fit into the story line at all. It seemed a bit
gratuitous, and I would have been happier had it
been omitted altogether.
Second, a minor quibble: whenever the men in
the lost tribe refer to the Book of Mormon, they
call it “The Book of Mormon—Another Testament
of Jesus Christ.” Inasmuch as the Andrews children
rarely called it by this name, but rather simply
“The Book of Mormon,” I wondered why they
didn’t simply adapt to the children’s preference.
Instead, there is a constant repetition of the entire
phrase. I wasn’t at all clear why this was necessary.
The Hidden Path, like the previous volumes, is
aimed toward families with young children. Ander-
sen teaches principles involving the importance of
family rituals and trust, the centrality of scripture
study and prayer in the life of the Latter-day Saint,
and the value of faith in Christ, even when things
look very bleak.
My minor quibbles aside, this is a wonderful
book. Older children will revel in the adventures;
parents will appreciate the underlying messages of
love and trust. I gladly recommend this latest entry
in the Book of Mormon Sleuth series, and I look
forward to the next volume. Who knows? Perhaps
Dr. Anthony will appear yet again!
Jeff Needle lives in Southern California with his books
and his computer and spends far too much time read-
ing. His reviews have appeared in IRREANTUM and on
AML-List, and he won an AML award for his reviews
in 2001. A self-described Jewish Gentile, he remains
on the outskirts of Zion, despite the elders’ best efforts
to get him under the water.
Irreantum 145
Characters Face Difficult Choices
A review of Shelly Johnson-Choong’s Finding Home
(Granite, 2002)
Reviewed by Katie Parker
T he title of this book is appropriate, as each of
the three college-aged main characters is strug-
gling to find her “home,” or how she best fits into
the world. The most interesting parts for me were
the ones that explored Toni’s past and how she dealt
with it. Toni’s parents divorced when she was a
child, and she now wrestles with her happy memo-
ries of their family contrasting with the ugliness her
parents’ relationship developed into and how she’s
been used as a pawn in their tactics against each
other. After living with her mother for a while, she
decided to move to Oregon with her father, away
from her family memories. As we meet Toni, she’s
attending Oregon State University and living alone
in her father’s house while he travels the country
and rarely checks in with her. She’s a Latter-day
Saint, but not active. Near the end of the book,
her father drops another bombshell: he got married
without telling her. This news creates all kinds of
negative emotions that Toni must face head on.
Tye, another main character, is an active Latter-
day Saint whose fondest dream is to have her family
sealed in the temple. However, for years her mother
has refused to be baptized and to kick her smoking
habit. This story line is mostly in the background,
though; what predominates is a story of a girl and
her horse. Tye is on Oregon State’s equestrian team,
and many pages are devoted to descriptions of her
care for and her relationship with her horse. In
addition, she’s developing a relationship with Kyle,
the team captain. At first she thinks very little of
the fact that he’s not LDS, but as she becomes a
stake missionary and is assigned to help fellowship
Toni, she realizes how important missionary work
is to her. The conclusion to her dilemma over Kyle is
surprising and makes a good ending to the story.
The third main character, Meggie, Tye’s LDS room-
mate, is grappling with the fact that her parents
want to turn over the family accounting business to
her, but she’s an excellent cook and she really wants
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
to become a chef. This “dilemma,” if you can call
it such, drags on for pages and is rehashed in such
a way that you know what she’s going to choose;
why won’t she just choose it? In addition, she’s
becoming involved with a very nice returned mis-
sionary who left an ex-fiancée—and apparently also
his heart—in California. He feels that he’s ready to
move on and build something with Meggie, and
Meggie is certainly drawn to him. The conclusion
to this is also surprising, and it’s a good one. I wish
her thoughts leading up to it had been worked into
the story and developed further; it seemed to have
come from nowhere.
It’s a nice story for the young adult set, and per-
haps even the adult set, but it tries to draw suspense
and dilemmas from situations where none truly
exist—at least, not to that extent. Johnson-Choong
uses cherries and cherry blossoms nicely to symbol-
ize Toni’s happy memories, although the imagery is
a bit overdone by the end of the book. I would have
liked to see Toni’s life explored further; she’s the
one whose problems interested me the most. Tye’s
problems don’t even really surface until partway
through the book; by that time I was tired of trying
to sympathize with a girl who had no problems and
tired of reading horse anecdotes.
Some intriguing situations and empowering con-
clusions exist here (and not everything ends up
with a conversion or everyone receiving exactly what
they always wanted), but the stories themselves seem
glossy by comparison. Good writing digs deep and
confronts those hard questions head on, not as a
sideline. Johnson-Choong is asking the questions.
She’s providing good answers. Getting her charac-
ters from their questions to their answers is a dif-
ferent challenge. She should not be afraid to explore
the process in her stories.
Challenging and Troubling Story
A review of Elizabeth Petty Bentley’s The Fly on the
Rose (PublishAmerica, 2002)
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
T he Fly on the Rose is a deep, dark, thought-
ful tale of love and nonlove, secrets kept and
trust betrayed, and the utter unpredictability of
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 146
life’s twists and turns. But, as noted below, this is
manifestly not, in my opinion, a romance novel. It
is a morality tale filled with uncertainty and lacking
clear answers.
The central character is Mary Jane Bell, but don’t
look for her name very often in this book. When
she’s out clubbing and flaunting her beauty, she’s
“Temple.” At work, she’s “Belle.” She has as many
names as she has personalities. She is deaf, which is
part of her insecurity, her lack of confidence.
One evening, she stumbles into Murph’s, a bar/
restaurant, and is spotted by Oswald Kauffmann,
who has adopted the name “Q” as his moniker. Q
is, by all accounts, a physically unattractive person.
He describes himself as “ugly.” Never married, he
wants nothing more than to meet the right woman,
raise children, and continue to excel in his chosen
profession of house building. Emboldened by alco-
hol, he approaches the stunningly beautiful Temple
and proposes marriage. He slips a ring, a family
heirloom, onto her finger. After days of squirming
and squeezing, she finally gets the ring off and sets
out to find Q and return his ring.
Temple has a past, including an ex-husband
and two children she is forbidden from seeing by
court order. She and her ex-husband, Charles, are
bitter enemies. From time to time, Temple tries to
get a letter to her children. Charles, who has now
remarried, is furious and takes steps to prevent any
further communication between Temple and her
children.
And then an odd thing happens: Temple is
strangely attracted to Q. When he learns she is a
Mormon, he insists on coming to church with her
and begins a journey toward membership.
One day, when Temple’s angry ex-husband con-
fronts her in the parking lot of her ward, she rashly
announces that she and Q are to be married. Q is
eventually baptized, and they are indeed married.
The problem is, since she has never cancelled her
sealing to her ex-husband, any children born to her
and Q would be sealed eternally to Charles, her ex-
husband, not to Q. She elects not to tell Q about
this. In fact, he has no idea that two other children
are involved.
And another problem: Temple isn’t in love with
Q. “Love” is not an option for this troubled woman.
Irreantum
This becomes a marriage of convenience, but only
from her perspective. Q is truly in love with Temple
and wants desperately for this to work.
As the story unfolds, we find that what might
have been an insipid tale of romance and faith cri-
ses is instead a taut, dark, complex tale of human
fallibility and the inability of religion to meet the
needs of the weak. Temple’s greatest desire was
that Q would not show any interest in the church.
Getting him involved in the very lifestyle that has
caused her so much misery could only make mat-
ters worse. If she could only keep Q at arm’s length
from her religious affiliation, she could avoid the
entanglements that would arise when the subject
of sealing came up.
But Q is drawn into the endless cycle of church
meetings and callings and finds it invigorating. And
when their first son, Will, is born, he is ecstatic. He
is yet to learn that Will will not be his in an eternal
sense. When he does find out, he begins to wonder
whether both his marriage and his decision to join
the church weren’t mere fits of madness.
Q’s family (he still lives with his parents) is
populated with interesting and generous people.
Temple’s family is likewise interesting. The charac-
ters in this book are sharply drawn; I could almost
picture what they looked like (except for Q—what
does such a deformed face look like?). But as his
character develops, I cared less and less about his
physical appearance and more about his noble,
albeit fragile, character.
Temple uses her deafness almost as a weapon
and an excuse. She is, to put it mildly, a basket
case. The more I learned about her, the less I liked
her. Her friends adore her, and it’s almost comical
when disparate friends meet and learn that Temple
is known by different names in her different life
situations. (And it is instructive to realize that she
prefers the name Temple, the name she uses when
she is living a lifestyle most unlike that which she
demonstrates in church.)
Frankly, I was glad to be done with this book.
It was a dark, heavy read. I was exhausted when I
was done. I really wanted to be rid of Temple, and I
wanted Q to move in next door. I wanted to know
why things were so upside-down in Temple’s world,
Irreantum 147
why one and one didn’t add to two, but I wasn’t
willing to spend another minute with Temple.
Beginning on page 155, there is an extended
discussion about the biblical figure Job, told in the
context of a church meeting discussion. I found
this narrative to be pivotal to understanding the
whole book. And I knew, despite my wish to put
as much distance as possible between Temple and
myself, that I had to work my way through this
story, just as Job had to work his way through con-
founding and disconcerting life changes.
Is it inconsistent to say that I enjoyed a book and
am glad it’s done? I hope not. I think this book first
came up in an AML-List discussion about the value
of romance novels. When the book arrived, I knew
I’d read it, but I was prepared to hate it. Romance
is just not my genre. This is no romance novel.
This is a maelstrom of loves and hates, of trusts and
distrusts, and hope and despair.
I would be remiss in not mentioning, as I am
wont to do, the typos and grammatical errors. Breath
should be breathe. Chili should be Chile. (One is a
food, the other a country.) Sight should be site. And
so on. Happily, there are only about a dozen and a
half of these errors in the entire book, so they are
therefore less distracting than they could have been.
I recommend The Fly on the Rose and fully expect
you to be just as happy as I was to come to the end
and move on to something a bit less troubling. This
is a well-written book, and I hope to see more from
this author.
Kidnapped Girl Guides Family
A review of Rachel Ann Nunes’s A Heartbeat Away
(Bonneville Books, 2003)
Reviewed by Katie Parker
K ristin is a regular thirteen-year-old girl with
siblings and crushes and plans for the future—
until she is snatched from a swimming pool park-
ing lot and subsequently killed by her kidnapper.
Her distressed family immediately tries to find
her, of course. But as the days turn to weeks and
months with no sign of Kristin or her body, they
cope with their stress and pain in different ways,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
while trying to return to some sense of normalcy
without giving up hope of finding her.
A Heartbeat Away is different from most books
in that the main character dies near the beginning.
The interesting thing is that she continues to nar-
rate the story from the other side of the veil, in a
manner not unlike the narrator of Alice Sebold’s
recent national bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones
(Little Brown, 2002).
Kristin’s first heavenly assignment is to help her
family heal. While some of the portrayals of para-
dise itself are pretty hokey, I loved watching Kristin
looking in on the comings and goings of her family
and giving them advice or comfort that they usu-
ally aren’t able to receive. On occasion, when their
hearts are really in tune with the Spirit and they
aren’t otherwise preoccupied, she’s able to convey
her messages to them and come away knowing that
they received them, somehow. Seeing this should
be comforting in particular to readers who have
lost loved ones. In A Heartbeat Away, the spirits
of those who have gone on before are all around,
but the mortals are generally unaware of their pres-
ence.
Most of the time, though, Kristin’s family is
frustratingly unreceptive to her help. Her father
immerses himself in his work, while her mother
secretly holds him responsible for Kristin’s disap-
pearance because he was a few minutes late picking
her up on that fateful night. The rift between them
grows so wide that they move to separate bed-
rooms. Meanwhile, Kristin’s older sister Meghan
feels personally responsible for her kidnapping,
since she witnessed it but was unable to prevent
it. She sinks into depression and starts seeking
approval from a rougher crowd, because she feels
more comfortable with them than with “good”
kids.
Watching Kristin’s family deal with their trials
is generally more interesting than reading Kristin’s
account of paradise. The problem with writing
about paradise is that, at least as far as many of
us mortals understand, there isn’t much conflict
there, so any story about paradise can’t have much
of a plot. The portrayal here is fluffy at best, and I
didn’t find much to which I could really relate.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 148
The most frustrating part of the story for me is
near the beginning, when Kristin gets a good look
at her kidnapper. She recognizes him as someone
she knows, but she doesn’t reveal his identity. She
even tells us a few pages later: “I know you want
me to tell you if Wade did it or had any part of
my abduction. But I can’t. You need to see how it
all came about, the way it appeared to my family.
Besides, right then even I didn’t know how every-
thing would turn out” (36).
Since Kristin, at this point, has the added author-
ity of being a resident of heaven with a broader
perspective than any of us mortals, it almost sounds
like she’s keeping the information from us for our
own good. However, a narrator deliberately with-
holding information from the reader represents a
blatant manipulation on the part of the author.
How can a reader sympathize with a protagonist
when the author’s getting in the way by keeping her
thoughts from the reader just to prolong the sus-
pense? Fortunately, enough hints are dropped that
I figured out the kidnapper about halfway through
the book. The scenes where we venture into the
mind of the kidnapper are interesting, though they
never reveal his name or other personal details:
I am the best, he thought. My next case
will be even better. More lovely. More satisfying.
Too bad I have to wait for the right conditions.
Maybe I should change the parameters—do
something different. No, if he did that they
wouldn’t know how to connect the killings.
They wouldn’t know how great he was. They
didn’t know it enough now. He would have
to think about that carefully and maybe do
something about it. (87)
Despite the fact that I already knew the identity of
the killer, the conclusion of the story is exciting,
and the story lines of the family members play out
in satisfying ways. Nunes can weave a pretty good
story, and it’s no accident that she’s one of the most
popular LDS authors to date.
Irreantum
A Debut Novel Shows Potential
A review of Linda Paulson Adams’s Prodigal Journey:
Thy Kingdom Come, Vol. 1 (Cornerstone, 2000)
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
P rodigal Journey is presented as a novel of
speculative fiction, placed some years into the
future. As such, there are few rules an author must
abide by. Inasmuch as the events have yet to hap-
pen, there are few historical markers that must be
noted. And ideas, always fluid and flexible, may
manifest in any way the author chooses. Science is
always a tricky thing; there are inexorable laws of
the universe that are challenged only with a wink
and a nod. But it can be done.
But writing purely speculative fiction, without
either a subtext or an over-text, is very difficult. It
must sufficiently engage the reader and, at the least,
present plausible possibilities and reconcilable even-
tualities. Consequently, authors will choose a parallel
theme, or story, to help carry the speculation. In the
case of Adams’s novel, the parallel story is a tale of
love, faith acceptance, understanding, and survival.
But, just as a cupcake consists of cake carrying
the icing, such books end up with one story carry-
ing the other. In the case of Prodigal Journey, the
love story is the cake and the speculative science is
clearly the icing.
And after reading the book, this comes as no
surprise. Adams has a sure hand when she’s writing
about the known. One story segment involves the
heroine, Alyssa, being forced to live in a futuristic
slum, a place of exile for society’s rejects. Her nar-
rative of life in the slum is absolutely riveting. I
couldn’t put it down. It was gritty, realistic, and
completely believable. It contains, in my opinion,
a most interesting cast of characters, nearly Dick-
ensian in their eccentricity and outspokenness, and
it could easily have stood alone as a tale of the role
of riches and the value of family and friendship.
But her footing is less certain when the author
enters the world of apocalyptic horror. The con-
tinuing story line of bioterror mixed with clearly
satanic references becomes less and less believable
and ultimately fails to intersect with the main story
Irreantum 149
line. Although there are places where the stories
cross, they tend more to run parallel and affect the
more powerful parts of the story in ways in which
the science and speculation were not necessary.
If one were to segregate the speculative part of
the book from the essential story, the former doesn’t
hold up well. But it’s easy to understand what
Adams is trying to do: present manifestations of
good (in the persons of Alyssa’s several friends and
even an ultimately heroic representative of the evil
“government”) against evil entities, both human
and superhuman. This is tricky stuff. You want to
present the good as the better way, but you don’t
want to minimize the allure and power of evil. This
is not an easy balance to achieve.
Ultimately, the bulk of the story is devoted to
Alyssa’s journey, from smug self-satisfaction and
relative luxury to a life of poverty and depression
and finally into a place of (albeit reluctant) accep-
tance and a sense of mission. This, in my mind,
was the real story. The techno stuff was, as I say,
just icing.
But even the good parts of the book have prob-
lems. And I will confess that my overall enjoyment
of the book caused me to cast a very critical eye on
some of the details. None of the problems I will
mention are fatal; none really detracted from my
enjoyment of the book.
One of the problems I detected was a lack of
continuity and closure. There were inexplicable
absences of narrative, in a book large enough to
have covered all the bases. A few examples:
Alyssa, while away at college, experiments with
drugs that, according to her pharmacist boyfriend,
have lasting effects. (The drug turns out to be part
of a governmental experiment to determine the
effect of this drug on humans. Alyssa unknowingly
becomes one of the test subjects.) Even after stop-
ping the drug, she continues to have nightmarish
visions of strange beings, even during broad day-
light! (Adams does an exceptional job of depicting
these daymares—very frightening, very eerie.) Later
in the book, she encounters Jesus on the road back
to her home. She is basically irreligious and can’t
quite explain the encounter, where she is healed of a
bullet wound. But she never reflects that this might
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
be another result of her drug use! I expected her to
say this; it never comes. How is this possible?
Alyssa’s mother, Joan, is presented as a violent,
vindictive woman, prone to beating Alyssa while
adoring her other daughter, Lauren. This is some-
what explained by the revelation that Joan never
wanted Alyssa, the second child. But there’s never
any explanation for why she’s so violent. It provides
a rationale for Alyssa’s finally breaking ties with her
family, especially after the death of her father, but
such extreme behavior on the part of her mother
merits some further explanation. This may be
resolved in future volumes.
The evil Victor Caldwell, an employee of the
“government” who is very high up in the peck-
ing order, is at the helm of the deconstruction of
American society and his ultimate ascension to
power. He is behind the drug experimentation in
which Alyssa gets caught up. And he needs Alyssa
so he can further evaluate the drug she’d been tak-
ing. But she wants no part of it. She knows who
he is, and she knows his name and what he’s up
to. Her flight from college, and eventually into
the difficult slum life, is essentially an effort to get
away from Caldwell. Later, toward the end of the
book, as she recovers from her ordeal in the home
of a childhood friend who is her main love interest,
she gets the news that a number of governmental
people have died of a strange illness. Even the presi-
dent has been stricken. But she never asks her hosts
whether Victor Caldwell was among those reported
stricken. Again, I waited for her to ask—this is of
paramount interest to her, wondering whether her
pursuer were dead. But she never asks.
Now, why am I being so picky? Because, in the
end, I really liked this book. I liked Alyssa and her
friends, and I hated her mother for her cruelty and
her father for his weakness. The characters in the
slum, as mentioned, were just riveting, the despair of
their lives described in stark and believable terms.
One can argue that the book is a bit too long.
Adams’s narrative style indicates a fondness for
real-time discussions, where sometimes-tangential
conversations span many pages. Recollections like-
wise are belabored, in my opinion. These, however,
may be matters of taste.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 150
At the same time, Adams knows how to move a
story along. There’s a surprise around every corner. Her
good characters are wonderfully multidimensional and
sometimes play against form, making for a textured
presentation that is very pleasing to this reader. Her
evil characters, however, like Victor Caldwell, are one-
dimensional and totally predictable.
My main recommendations to Adams:
1. Future volumes, if they are to continue the
theme of speculative science/love story, ought to be
better integrated, with less attention to technical
detail and more to the human dimension of the
characters. I would have enjoyed learning more
about Victor Caldwell. I would have liked to see
him fleshed out a little more.
2. As illustrated above, certain parts of the story
ought to be linked up a little better. The reflection
on the drug experience is an example. In other words,
I would have liked Alyssa to ask the questions I
would have asked, had I been in her situation. This
kind of closure serves to link the reader with the
characters, a very desirable effect.
3. Narratives really don’t need to happen in real
time. The essence of a conversation does not require
the recitation of every word spoken and every
impression thought. Most readers would appreciate
less chitchat and more character development.
I’m being fairly critical because this series has so
much potential. It is a good start to what can be a
fine series. There is much yet to learn about Alyssa
and the people who surround her, so many unre-
solved story elements. This, of course, is expected
in a series book. And Adams has set up a situa-
tion where the various characters in her book can
ultimately come together and achieve great things.
Each of the protagonists is a distinct character;
most have little in common except their faith. And
yet one can anticipate them joining their talents
and strengths to provide a powerful response to an
oppressive and murderous regime, the speculated
American government of the future.
Again, overall I really liked this book and am
very glad to have read it. I look forward to the next
volume. Adams has given us a good start to what
can be an exciting and satisfying series.
Irreantum
Selected Recent Releases
Compiled by Andrew Hall
Anderson, C. Paul. Final Act (Covenant,
14.95). To Wendy Wood, the job sounded ideal.
She would be living in the mansion of a legend-
ary film star, and she would be able to focus on
teaching a single student. But a chilly reception
by the household staff and her initial encounter
with Paul, her young charge, leave her wondering
if she made the right decision—and now it seems
someone wants her out of the way. Wendy must
quickly unravel the past of the tumultuous Horstman
household—before she becomes the next victim.
Card, Orson Scott. The Crystal City (Tor,
25.95). In this world where “knacks” abound,
Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, is a Maker;
he has the knack of understanding how things are
put together, how to create them, repair them, keep
them whole, or tear them down. Alvin has been
trying to avert the terrible war that his wife, Peggy,
a torch of extraordinary power, has seen down the
lifelines of every American. Now she has sent him
down the Mizzippy to the city of New Orleans, or
Nueva Barcelona as they call it under Spanish occu-
pation. Nueva Barcelona is about to experience a
plague, and Alvin’s efforts to protect his friends by
keeping them healthy will create more danger than
he could ever have suspected.
Card, Orson Scott, and Doug Chiang. Robota
(Chronicle, 35.00). An original illustrated science
fiction novel, Robota follows the fortunes of a
strangely powerful amnesiac named Caps as he
navigates an ancient, decaying world in which a
dwindling human population battles a society of
merciless robot warriors. Aided by talking animals
and stalked by terrifying hunter robots, Caps slowly
rises to fulfill an awesome destiny. Integrating word
and image, Card’s storytelling is interwoven with
seventy-five pieces of Chiang’s wildly imagined,
meticulously rendered art.
Cratty, Nancy. Never Too Late (Covenant, 14.95).
Carly Weston believes handsome attorney Adam
Masterson is everything she ever wanted in a hus-
band. But when she tries to share the gospel with
Irreantum 151
him, he mocks her religious values. Disenchanted,
she returns to her small Nevada hometown and finds
an unexpected chance at love with former school-
mate Kolton Raywood. Although he lacks Adam’s
professional polish, Kolton’s strong testimony and
rugged good looks give Carly reason to risk her
heart again. But there’s a secret he hides beneath his
tough exterior—and speculations about his tragic
past could destroy their chance for love.
Edwards, Wendie. Millennial Glory, Vol. 2:
Wars of Light (Seventh Seal, 13.95). A war is rag-
ing on the earth, as it once did in heaven. An angel
of light has fallen from glory and wishes now to
steal the souls of men. Imam Mahdi is successfully
gathering his legions as the righteous experience
greater spiritual gifts to prepare them for the battle
of the new age. For all, the heart is the battlefield
and choices dictate alliances. Which power will win
your soul? It is the end of days, and all is in com-
motion.
Evans, Richard Paul. A Perfect Day (Dutton,
22.95). Robert, a sales rep for a small radio station,
hopes of one day leaving it all behind for a success-
ful writing career. When he is unexpectedly laid off
from his job, his wife encourages him to pursue his
dream of writing. He writes a novel that becomes a
huge success, and Robert finds himself swept into
a new world far from his wife and home. In time
Robert loses track of the things he loves most, until
he meets a stranger who begins telling him intimate
details about his past, his present, and, most impor-
tant, the brevity of his future. Thinking he has just
months to live, Robert begins to discover the truth
about himself: who he has become, what he has lost,
and what it will take to find love again.
Farland, David. Lair of Bones (Tor, 27.95).
Prince Gaborn has defeated the forces arrayed against
him each time before: the magical and human forces
marshaled by Raj Ahten, who seeks immortality at
any cost and has given up his humanity in trade,
and the inhuman, innumerable, insectile hordes
of the giant Reavers from under the Earth, whose
motives are unknowable but inimical to human
life. Now there must be final confrontations, both
on the field of battle, with the supernatural creature
that Raj Ahten has become, and underground, in
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
the cavernous homeland of the Reavers, where the
sorcerous One True Master who rules them all lies
in wait—in the Lair of Bones. The fourth volume
of the Runelords series.
Green, Betsy Brannon. Above Suspicion (Cov-
enant, 14.95). It’s been five years since Mary Grace
has seen John. And right at this moment, Mary
Grace wishes she wasn’t seeing him standing in the
dining room of her bed and breakfast. Now the ris-
ing star reporter has returned to the small Florida
town of Bethany Beach to investigate an unsolved
murder—and to see Mary Grace. As John persuades
Mary Grace to help him explore the tragic secrets
of twenty-five years ago, Miss Eugenia Atkins and
her friends arrive for a pleasant vacation. But when
a guest ends up dead, they all become embroiled in
investigating this new mysterious crime.
Hayes, Clyde, and Pat Jacobson. The Tunnels
of Tecsuna (Cedar Fort, 9.95). Thirteen-year-old
Zach, who enjoys the conveniences of television and
Nintendo, isn’t convinced that accompanying his
family to the Yucatan Peninsula is the way he wants
to spend his summer. On a deserted beach near
the Mayan city of Tecsuna, Zach discovers a small
golden crab. Inside, he finds a map detailing tun-
nels that lie beneath the ancient ruins. Zach and his
Mexican friend, Carlos, use the map to explore the
tunnels and find secret entrances into parts of Tec-
suna, leading them into the middle of an unexpected
adventure that will change their lives forever.
Heimerdinger, Chris. Passage to Zarahemla
(Heimerdinger Entertainment, 13.95). In a secret
forested hollow of southern Utah, a mystery is about
to unfold. Kerra and Brock McConnell are orphans
on the run. To keep from being separated by state
authorities, they flee to the only relatives Kerra
remembers from her earliest childhood: an LDS
aunt and uncle who live at the edge of a wondrous
place in the woods. It’s a place where parallel reali-
ties collide and where ancient Nephites cross paths
with the modern residents of a sleepy Utah town.
Heuston, Kimberly. Dante’s Daughter (Front
Street, 16.95). The famed fourteenth-century poet
Dante was politically active, often choosing the
wrong side in internecine battles of the ruling fami-
lies, forcing him constantly to abandon his family
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 152
and even his country while seeking refuge. Finally
his poetry won him peace and patronage in Ravenna.
His one daughter, Beatrice, attended him during
the last few years of his life and eventually became a
Dominican nun. Heuston traces the life of an intel-
ligent and talented young woman in a time when
a woman’s role required neither intelligence nor
talent. In spite of that, Beatrice traveled extensively,
learned an art, and devoted her full life to her work
and her god.
Hughes, Dean. Midway to Heaven (Deseret,
19.95). What father ever thinks his little girl is
ready to get married? David Markham is perfect.
Too perfect. Athletic, good-looking, musical, spiri-
tual—it seems like there’s nothing David can’t do,
but Ned Stevens is unconvinced. Nobody could
be that good, and he’s sure there’s something fishy
about this boy his daughter seems so crazy about.
He just has to find out what it is before it’s too late.
But how far will he have to go to prove his point?
Jordan, Aaron. A Dream of Freedom (Cedar
Fort, 17.95). The Great Terror of the late 1930s
is raging in the Soviet Union, and Misha Kostrin
lives in constant fear and spiritual emptiness. Shortly
after the secret police arrest his best friend, Misha
himself comes under suspicion. As he waits for his
own inevitable demise, he finds a book his uncle
left him years ago, and in it he discovers the key
to saving himself from the evil that surrounds him.
When Misha’s own country betrays him, Misha’s
only hope rests with a daring, young American
pilot and a beautiful, maverick FBI agent.
Kilpack, Josi S. Tempest Tossed (Cedar Fort,
17.95). Janet is on the fast track in her career, and
nothing will slow her down, not even falling in love
with a man who holds the key to helping her find
the peace she’s searched for all her life. With two
failed marriages behind her, it’s easy to be skeptical,
but there is something about Tally that’s impossible
to ignore. Janet decides to join her life to his, hop-
ing the complications will work themselves out.
But despite Tally’s determination to make their
marriage work, Janet has secrets she is desperate to
protect. Soon, she finds herself helplessly trapped
within a prison of her own making. By the grace
of God, Janet is given a second chance, one more
Irreantum
opportunity to resolve her past and develop faith
for the future.
Miller, Ron Jay. The Medallion (Cedar Fort,
14.95). The man thought he had beaten Calvin
and had removed his will to resist. But the man
didn’t realize the depth of the boy with whom he
dealt. Nor did he realize the power that would come
to the boy’s aid. Stripped of his former wealth,
with only the medallion to remind him of his past,
Calvin draws on inner spiritual strength he doesn’t
realize he possesses. He finds love and self-esteem
where he least expects it and overcomes challenges
that would break many grown men.
Nielson, Steven D. Two Runs of Stone: A
Beckoning Call (Granite, 24.95). Follow the life of
Catherine Jensen and her sons through Denmark
of the 1860s, the Prussian war, and the early dawn-
ing of a new religion that spawns a great migration
from Denmark to Zion.
Perry, Anne. Come Armageddon (Ace, 24.95).
Tathea, the Empress of Sihinabar, has wandered
the Lost Lands for five hundred years, spreading the
teachings of a mystical Book to prepare mankind
for the inevitable battle with the Great Enemy.
Now that time has come, and Tathea stands alone.
Pratt, Sheralyn. Spies, Lies, and a Pair of
Ties (Spectrum, 13.95). Rhea Jensen is the best
private investigator in the business, and the rich
and famous of Hollywood pay her accordingly.
When the president of an athletic supply company
claims he’s been framed for embezzlement, Rhea
decides to uncover the truth—or at least she would
if her client would stop sabotaging her attempts to
help him. It’s not just another day on the job when
Rhea meets two men on a mission—literally. Born
and raised to be a cynic, Rhea isn’t prepared for the
curiosity she feels to hear their message, nor for
how her life begins to change once she does.
Rallison, Janette. All’s Fair in Love, War, and
High School (Walker and Co., 16.95). When head
cheerleader Samantha Taylor does poorly on the
SAT exam, she determines that her only hope for
college admission is to win the election for student
body president, but her razor wit and acid tongue
make her better suited to dishing out insults than
winning votes.
Irreantum 153
Randle, Kristen D. Slumming (HarperTem-
pest, 15.99). Nikki, Alicia, and Sam unexpectedly
find themselves launching a “human experiment.”
It seems like the perfect way to make a difference
in their last few weeks of high school: they will each
pick a student who needs a little improving and
take that person to the prom. Harmless, right? When
they become entrenched in their projects, each has
to face difficult realizations about the people they
have chosen—and themselves. Before long, their
own close friendship feels fragile. Will they make
it to graduation without hurting one another—or
anybody else?
Rutter, Michael. Run of the Arrow (Granite,
14.95). Wolf Rockwell’s trip into the Wind Rivers
Range to get furs for the Mormons turns into a
struggle for his life. This adventure tests not only
Wolf ’s ability to fight and to survive but also his
integrity as he accepts the challenge of the Run of
the Arrow.
Sanders, Brett Alan. A Bride Called Freedom
(Ediciones Nuevo Espacio, 14.95). The figure of
Dorotea Bazán—who was captured from a village
in the Pampas, sometime in the nineteenth cen-
tury, by raiding Indians and who grew to love her
tribal husband and children and deeply resented
being “rescued,” years later, by her countrymen—
has long haunted Argentine imaginations. Sanders
blends Dorotea’s story into that of Lucio Mansilla,
who, in his 1870 account of A Visit to the Ranquel
Indians, first queried his century’s stereotypes of
“barbarism” and “civilization.”
Stansfield, Anita. Gables of Legacy, Vol. V:
The Miracle (Covenant, 14.95). Scott Ivie is finally
learning what it means to be part of a family. In
fact, he has merged so perfectly into the Hamilton
family that he almost feels he was destined to be
living and working with them in Australia. But
when Jess’s younger sister Emma returns from her
mission early because of a health problem, she is
less than pleased to see the good-looking stranger
sitting at the family dinner table. Facing a life-
threatening crisis, Emma has far more important
things to worry about than a gold-digging Ameri-
can—even if she is attracted to him.
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
 Stewart, Chris. The Great and the Terrible,
Vol. 1: Prologue, The Brothers (Deseret, 17.95).
In the time before creation, before so many of the
children of God turned away from their Father and
walked knowingly into the dark, there was a choos-
ing, a sifting, a contest of ideas and a battle for
souls. In that great premortal war, each of us learned
the first lessons of life: The great ones may fall. The
wicked can change. The weak and the foolish can
become the strongest of all. And the battle between
good and evil is the same regardless of the time or
place.
Thayer, Douglas. The Conversion of Jeff Wil-
liams (Signature, 18.95). Provo is a world away
from San Diego. In this topsy-turvy tale, it is
the wealthy, religious, east-bench Provoans who
enjoy the best that life can offer and share it with
a less-privileged, laid-back, So Cal teenager over
one summer vacation. At first, Jeff Williams finds
himself dazzled by east-bench affluence and faith.
But as the summer progresses, events persuade him
to rethink this religion-and-riches culture and to
accept that the normal temptations and foibles of
youth—without the Porsche—are just fine.
Weyland, Jack. Adam’s Story (Deseret, 14.95).
Elder Roberts knows that he and his companion
are out of their area. But he has only a few months
left on his mission in New Jersey, and there’s one
door he just has to knock on: his mom’s parents,
who haven’t seen him since he was a baby. Maybe,
just maybe, he can get them to accept the gospel
like their daughter, Charly, did more than twenty
years ago. And maybe he can find out something
about the mother who died when he was a baby
and discover a little more about himself in the pro-
cess.
Weyland, Jack. Everyone Gets Married in the
End (Horizon, 14.98). A short-story collection
overflowing with comedy, faith, and good times.
Weyland, Jack, and Linda Kudlik. Eagles
Don’t Eat Worms (Horizon, 11.98). When Jeff
needs some extra cash, his friend Nick comes up
with a great idea: steal a dog from a blind lady, and
then return it to get a reward. When Jeff is talked
into it, everything goes wrong. Nick escapes, but
Jeff is caught red-handed. Instead of sending him
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 154
to jail, the judge sentences Jeff to wear special con-
tact lenses that make him blind. Lisa, the intended
victim, decides to help him out. Romance grows
between the two, but a police officer who is also
attracted to Lisa proves to be quite an obstacle in
their relationship. An even greater danger is Nick’s
reappearance.
Woolley, David G. The Promised Land, Vol.
3: Place of Refuge (Covenant, 23.95). It is six
centuries before Jesus of Nazareth will be born,
and Jerusalem is in turmoil. After the conflict with
Babylon escalates, the ruling class of Judah threat-
ens any who dare opposes their tenuous power.
But amid the mayhem, two prophets of God come
forth: Lehi and Ezekiel. However, both are in dan-
ger of losing their lives. Lehi and his family have
narrowly escaped into the wilderness, where the
patriarch must contend not only with enemies pur-
suing them but also with his two defiant sons. Mean-
while, Ezekiel has been imprisoned and knows he
must escape if the prophecies he has received are to
be fulfilled.
Yates, Dan. Walk with an Angel (Covenant,
14.95). Eight years ago, Tanner Nelson’s pleasant
life crashed headlong into misfortune when his best
friend, Brandon, was murdered. To make matters
worse, Katherine, the woman Tanner hoped to marry,
left for a new life in Australia. Since then, his life
has been in an emotional holding pattern. Tanner
doesn’t realize it, but it’s now time for things to be
put in order—with a little heavenly help. At the
same time, in the far side of forever, Mitzi is gladly
filling her assignment as Tanner’s guardian angel
when Brandon, now an angel himself, shows up to
help. Do the authorities think she can’t do her job?
Irreantum
 M o r m o n
L i t e r a r y
S c e n e
Compiled by Christopher Bigelow
Books
• Rejected by publisher Covenant and banned
by the two leading LDS retail bookstore chains,
Anita Stansfield’s latest novel, The Captain of Her
Heart, has been published by Crosswalk Books,
the author’s newly formed company. Stansfield
told the Associated Press that Covenant rejected
what would have been her twenty-sixth novel with
the firm because its protagonist has premarital sex.
Stansfield called the move unfair because her books
have always dealt with challenging issues—includ-
ing adultery and rape—in a way that she felt was
appropriate and inoffensive. “I’d written about such
things before, even more boldly than it was handled
in this book,” she said. “What was all right then
suddenly wasn’t all right anymore.” To the Associ-
ated Press, Stansfield said, “In the world, sexual issues
are discussed very lightly and very crudely. Some
people are so offended by that they don’t want to
talk about it all, because they’re afraid it will put
them in the same category. It’s something that’s a
part of our lives, and it’s something that should be
discussed appropriately.” For more information,
visit anitastansfield.com.
• Reviewing Iced at the Ward, Burned at the
Stake and Other Poems by Paul Swenson (Signa-
ture), Salt Lake Tribune critic Martin Naparsteck
said the poems “teem with a sense of rebelliousness,
of scolding church leaders for what the poet sees as
failures, and of the pain and anger felt by those the
church does not treat kindly.” Observing that the
poems “require some knowledge of Mormon theol-
ogy, of Utah’s Mormon culture and of controversies
within the church,” Naparsteck noted that “what
approaches universality in Swenson’s poems is a
search for pan-religiosity, a sense of reaching for
what is good in all religions and a rejection of what
he finds silly or otherwise unacceptable in his own.”
The reviewer recommends that, “in the poems that
Irreantum 155
are primarily complaints, and there are a half dozen
or so of those,” the reader should “ignore the poet’s
slippages and continue on to what is good in this
collection. Those poems are filled with understand-
ing and kindness and courage.” Deseret Morning
News critic Dennis Lythgoe wrote that, ironically,
the work “is unlikely to be understood by the
people he is trying to reach—the average Utah
Mormon with all of his or her flaws conspicuously
magnified. It’s too bad Swenson did not define his
audience more broadly—because he has talent.”
• LDStorymakers, Inc., is a new co-op book
publisher “with no interest in becoming profitable,
or even competitive, but focusing on providing
a publishing alternative for its author-members.”
Founding members include several published
authors, such as Linda P. Adams, Shirley Bahlmann,
Anne Bradshaw, Thom Duncan, Josi S. Kilpack,
Lisa J. Peck, B. J. Rowley, Gordon Ryan, Marsha
Ward, Linda Shelley Whiting, and Julie Wright. In
April the company will release its first book, LDS
Storymakers: Publishing Secrets, a collaboration by
co-op members detailing how to break into the LDS
publishing market. Next on the publishing list will
be Refining Fire, Linda Paulson Adams’s sequel
to her novel Prodigal Journey, followed by Shirley
Bahlmann’s novel Fool’s Gold and the fourth book
in B. J. Rowley’s Light Traveler Adventure series.
The company will consider submissions only by
co-op members, who must be published authors
and receive an invitation to join. The books will
be distributed through Brigham Distributing of
Brigham City, Utah. For further information, write
to admin@ldstorymakers.com.
Film
• Opening in February, The Best Two Years
received some of the most favorable reviews yet for
a Mormon film. Humor columnist Robert Kirby
called it “far better than the rest.” Salt Lake Tribune
critic Sean P. Means said that this is the LDS movie
he’s been waiting for. “Well acted by a natural
ensemble of young actors, and smartly written and
sensitively directed by Scott S. Anderson, The Best
Two Years is a warm comedy that gives some insight
into the daily life and personal turmoil of LDS
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
missionaries abroad.” Noting that the film “has the
professional sheen of any Hollywood production,”
he observed that Anderson “explores the spiritual side
of mission work—not merely the rote recitation of
LDS history, but the finding of purpose through
the work itself. Even for non-Mormons, there is an
undeniable power in the scenes where these young
men talk about their faith.” Hinting that the film
may be superior to God’s Army, Deseret Morning
News critic Jeff Vice said, “Not only does this
surprisingly warm and funny—and well-acted—
comedy-drama stand head and shoulders above
the most recent crop of LDS features, it’s a film
that may appeal to moviegoers outside its obvi-
ous target audience. Despite occasional ham-fisted
and off-key moments, the film makes you look
forward to whatever its writer-director, first-timer
Scott S. Anderson, does next.” A Salt Lake City
Weekly reviewer lauded “[K. C.] Clyde’s impressive
lead performance, which is so sly and natural that
it clashes brutally with [Kirby] Heyborne’s broad
Oklahoma hick shtick. Tone problems like that
often get Anderson in trouble, only to be balanced
by an actual cinematic sensibility.” Deseret Morning
News columnist Chris Hicks said, “Here’s hoping
the HaleStorm folks took a good, long, hard look at
this film and learned something from it about story
and character. The Best Two Years earns its laughs,
and none of them are cheap.” An independent pro-
duction distributed by HaleStorm, the film is based
on Anderson’s similarly named play that was first
produced more than fifteen years ago.
• Reviewing HaleStorm’s latest film, The Home
Teachers, Deseret Morning News critic Jeff Vice
said, “For all its technical achievements, the com-
pany’s latest—and least funny—comedy makes you
yearn for the quaint incompetence of the other two
films. It’s as if in trying to tell an actual story the
filmmakers have taken a big step backward. The
bits cribbed from other movies only make you wish
you were watching those instead. And the tonal
shift in the film’s final third, from slapstick to more
saccharine drama, is much too jarring.” Calling the
film “an uneven buddy movie,” Salt Lake Tribune
critic Sean P. Means said, “The gags (involving an
overflowing toilet, a disrupted funeral service and a
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 156
destroyed car) are juvenile and plod on too long.”
However, Means said that “the leads are engag-
ing” and that “Hale is showing signs of improve-
ment: backing off the local-celebrity cameos (with
the woeful exception of radio personality Jimmy
Chunga), taking pains to explain LDS culture to
outsiders, and going beyond the green Jell-O jokes
to talk about the Mormon faith.” Film critic Eric
D. Snider wrote:
Let me explain why it isn’t funny. For farce to
work, it must obey the basic laws of physics
and logic. Farce isn’t where impossible things
happen; it’s where improbable things happen.
The genius of good farce is in the audience’s
realization that, while it’s unlikely they’d ever
find themselves in that situation, if they did find
themselves there, that’s probably how they’d
react, too. Farce creates a new reality, where
improbable predicaments arise, but its charac-
ters are still bound by the laws of human nature
and react accordingly. That’s what makes it
funny: the persistence of human nature even
in the most bizarre circumstances. In The Home
Teachers, many things occur that are simply
impossible. To make matters worse, the char-
acters react in ways that fly in the face of all
common sense and human nature.
• HaleStorm Entertainment announced plans
to build a film production facility by the end of this
year on a 2.94-acre lot in northeast Provo, Utah, at
the Riverwoods Office Park. In addition to renting
facilities to other filmmakers, HaleStorm will use
the studio to branch out into family-friendly main-
stream moviemaking in addition to producing “one
good LDS-themed movie a year for Utah’s LDS
audience.” According to the Deseret Morning News,
this project “thrills Utah’s film industry, which has
been worried about the declining number of movies
being filmed in Utah.” HaleStorm’s three movies have
together made more than $10 million.
• “The Promethean,” Kohl Glass’s thirteen-minute
retelling of a Greek myth, took first place in the
short-film competition of the latest LDS Film Fes-
tival. T. C. Christensen took second place in the
juried competition and won an Audience Choice
Irreantum
Award for “A Pioneer Miracle.” Calvin Cory took
third place for “Rulon’s Game,” and Audience Choice
Awards were given to Dave Skousen for “Rain” and
Chris Coy for “Remembering Vinnytya.” For more
information, visit www.ldsbox.com.
• Five years after she first met Mormon mis-
sionaries on a subway in Munich, Germany, in
1997, documentary filmmaker Nancy du Plessis
completed her film Get the Fire: Young Mormon
Missionary Abroad, which PBS recently broad-
cast. Granted unusual access by the church, which
later withdrew its support, du Plessis followed three
young Utah men for over two years as they received
their mission calls and fulfilled their duties in south-
ern Germany. “It’s a picture-book example of what
happens in a rite of passage,” du Plessis told the
Salt Lake Tribune. One of the missionaries, Brady
Flamm, countered: “She’d always ask fishy questions,
but they got worse and worse. I was hurt when I
saw the film, to say the least.” Flamm felt that du
Plessis “juxtaposed critical comments with the mis-
sionaries’ everyday lives to ‘make us look naive or
stupid.’” The Tribune reported that du Plessis edited
three hundred hours of tape down to less than
thirty minutes and then added interviews with five
former missionaries who have since left the church.
“One was gay, and the others had cultural and intel-
lectual issues with the church. Du Plessis defended
the inclusion of critics, saying, ‘Test audiences were
always frustrated because they had questions to things
that my subjects never wanted to talk about.’” For
more information, visit www.pbs.org/getthefire.
• LDS filmmaker Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dyna-
mite was a hit at the recent Sundance Film Festival.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “Napoleon
Dynamite, directed by Hess (who co-wrote the film
with his wife, Jerusha), tells of a geeky teenager
in moonboots living in a rural Idaho town.” The
report continues: “Hess, who left BYU to make
Napoleon Dynamite and plans to finish his degree,
stressed that his movie should not be lumped into
the Mormon Cinema genre. ‘I am LDS, and I made
a film,’ Hess said, but the characters ‘aren’t LDS at
all.’ He is shuttling between Utah and Los Ange-
les, finishing the sound mix, getting prints made
Irreantum 157
and assembling the team of industry pros who
will turn Napoleon Dynamite from a festival entry
into a mass-distributed film.” Reporting that Fox
Searchlight paid three million dollars for the film,
Entertainment Weekly added: “While Dynamite is
a first feature from a group of twentysomething
Utah natives, they clearly don’t think like gee-whiz
newcomers. The filmmakers’ deal stipulates that
their coming-of-age comedy will play in the top 25
markets. This was smart, since the $400,000 Dyna-
mite features none of the coming-of-age staples: no
awkward sex scenes, experimental boozing, or even
swearing. ‘Having a faith liberates you creatively
to try and do something different,’ says director
Jared Hess.” An EW reviewer said that Dynamite
“laughs at a high school loser in Idaho (played with
cruel precision by Jon Heder), his loser friends and
tormentors, his loser family, and the loser citizens
around him whose major collective fault appears to
be that they haven’t left Idaho for Park City; lint
from the cuffs of Todd Solondz, Wes Anderson,
and Alexander Payne clings to every frame. (Hess
announced during the post-screening Q&A session
that he’s hoping to turn his indie art into a TV
series.)” A Salt Lake City Weekly reviewer wrote:
The only truly transcendent experience I
had at Sundance came straight outta BYU, yo.
Jared Hess’s misfit comedy took life for one
outcast Southern Idaho high school student
and turned it into an explosion of huge laughs.
Lots of the big-city critics hated the film, con-
vinced that it was full of condescending cheap
shots toward its characters. But the guys from
the big media centers always seem to clench
up when stylized regional comedy comes
their way—About Schmidt, Fargo—perhaps
convinced that they’ll be considered insensi-
tive if they admit to finding any oddballs funny
except New York or Los Angeles oddballs. Screw
’em—it may be completely episodic, but it’s
an absolute riot.”
• After booking C. Jay Cox’s gay Mormon mis-
sionary movie Latter Days, a Salt Lake City the-
ater later canceled the run, claiming that the film
Winter 2003/Spring 2004
lacks artistic merit. However, the film’s supporters
accused the New York–based theater chain of giv-
ing in to pressure from Latter-day Saint interests,
which theater managers denied. An Onion A.V. Club
writer asked, “Why would Mormons want to see a
movie that doesn’t pay their faith a shred of respect,
instead painting them as repressed, hateful, crimi-
nally unfashionable polygamists? Writer-director
C. Jay Cox and his distributor are crying censor-
ship, but they’re really trying to have it both ways:
They release a movie that belittles a community,
and then express outrage when that community
doesn’t want to show it. Beyond all this manu-
factured controversy lies the sort of feeble, pussy-
footing gay romance that has clogged indie circles
for years.” Film critic Eric D. Snider wrote: “The
writer/director is C. Jay Cox (writer of Sweet Home
Alabama), himself a former Mormon and mission-
ary. If Latter Days actually examined the dichotomy
between religion and homosexuality, or the struggle
that gay men with religious backgrounds face in
coming to terms with their orientation, then it
would have something. But Cox has no interest in
examining the Mormon church. He only wants to
rail against it. The church and its adherents in this
movie are villains, bullies, and homophobes, set up
not as characters or plot devices but merely as straw
men to be knocked down.”
• Citing depictions of realistic wartime vio-
lence, the Motion Picture Association of America
assigned an R-rating to the forthcoming film Saints
and Soldiers, a Mormon-made account of WW II
soldiers who escape a massacre in Europe. Winner
of top awards at twelve film festivals nationwide, the
film is based on the Jeffrey Scott novel, with Ryan
Little directing, Adam Abel producing, and Excel
Entertainment Group distributing. As reported in
the Deseret Morning News, the filmmakers claim the
movie contains no foul language and has no sexual
content, and the violence is far less frequent and
graphic than that found in many PG-13 films. In
test screenings around the country, 95 percent of
parents agreed the movie should be rated PG-13.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “Although they
can reedit the film and appeal to the MPAA again,
Winter 2003/Spring 2004 158
the duo vows alterations will only be made ‘if it’s
something that we can change without affecting
the integrity and power of the film that hundreds of
people have fallen in love with.’” Upon appeal with
minor changes, the film received a PG-13 rating.
Drama
• A recent off-Broadway play titled Right as Ron
satirized events surrounding the Elizabeth Smart
kidnapping. According to Playbill magazine, the
play follows the homecoming of a young kidnapped
girl named April Starr. After movie deals start rolling
in following her return, the Starr family doesn’t meet
expectations of the all-American family. Playwright
Judd Block told the Deseret Morning News that what
he’s really satirizing is popular culture and the media.
“I don’t think there’s very much from the actual
story,” he said. “I didn’t think the story of Elizabeth
Smart was funny at all. I don’t wish to exploit their
ordeal. This is purely my imagination of what a fam-
ily similar to theirs might go through.” The fictional
account is not set in Salt Lake City, and no refer-
ences are made to Mormon religious beliefs.
• Reversing a lower court’s dismissal, a federal
appeals court ruled that University of Utah theater
professors may have violated the rights of a former
student, Latter-day Saint Christina Axson-Flynn,
by not allowing her to omit profanity from an
in-class performance. “This is a great victory
for religious freedom,” Axson-Flynn’s attorney,
Michael Paulsen, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It is
a unanimous decision rejecting the lower court’s
approach and finding that a state university may
not discriminate in an academic program on the
basis of a student’s religious beliefs and freedom of
speech. Students cannot be compelled by univer-
sity officials to violate their religious consciences
by word or deed.” As a result of the ruling, a jury
will now decide this religious discrimination case.
According to Axson-Flynn’s lawyers, they have
heard from hundreds of other students who allege
religious discrimination against the University of
Utah, and additional plaintiffs and defendants may
be added to the suit.
Irreantum
Miscellany
• Cornerstone Publishing announced plans for
a new printed magazine called SinglesLDS. “The
magazine will be directed at all singles, but espe-
cially those who do not want to remain so. It will
confront tough issues, give news of the singles
scene all over the country, feature noted singles,
present advice on self-improvement and marriage
preparation, publish feedback, and encourage arts
and hobbies. We are looking for writers to contrib-
ute articles pertaining to self-improvement, dating
relations, practical guidance for single parents, and
other subjects of interest to single adults. Also,
if you are single, we would appreciate short or
serialized stories, poetry, and humor.” For more
information, contact Richard Hopkins at corner
stonepublishing@comcast.net.

Irreantum 159 Winter 2003/Spring 2004

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