Along the way Frank encounters a closeted secular humanist, a polygamist prophet, a psychiatrist, a Mason, government employees, college professors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs-all drawn with heightened realism reminiscent of Charles Dickens or the grotesque forms of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Frank’s extended family is just a generation removed from polygamy and still energized by old-time grudges and deprivations. Of central importance is his Lutheran girlfriend, Marianne, whom Frank seduces, begrudgingly marries, and eventually loves. He is saved by an epiphany that has proved controversial among readers, either interpreting it as an extreme impiety or celebrating it as a moving and entirely plausible rendering of a biblical theme in a Western setting.įrank comes into contact with a host of rural and urban characters. He is a dedicated sinner until family tragedy catapults him into an arcane form of penitence preached among frontier Mormons. A young ranch-hand, Frank Windham, conceives of God as an implacable enemy of human appetite. Recognized as a Mormon classic twenty years after its release,The Backslider features longstanding Christian conflicts played out in a scenic, sparsely populated area of southern Utah. Recognized as a Mormon classic twenty years after its. Peterson a sunnier Hawthorne to assist us in interpreting the human condition-the Mormon human condition-as far as it is translated correctly. Publication of this book cheers us as well, suggesting as it does that Mormon letters may have found in Levi S. Not all readers will cheer Peterson's vision of man's lot, but all who love Mormonism and literature will cheer his stories and the questions they raise.
For Peterson's characters, the skewer pin seems to hurt too much to allow gracious acceptance they struggle on. Like Jonahs they fear God, flee his grace, consistently manifest a "private obduracy," a hesitancy to yield to God in humility.
His Mormons are head-to-toe Mormons, not veneer Mormons. (From the back cover: Crafting his stories in a powerful a.)įrom the back cover: Crafting his stories in a powerful and compelling style, Peterson has wonderfully shaped his original characters around an essentially Mormon core. Canyons of Grace: Stories (Illinois Short Fiction)
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