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Salvation

3 She held the umbrella close to her head, limiting her vision to the circle of stones at her feet. Anna watched her companion’s hemline bounce in time to the click of her heels against…

The Meadow

My family and I drove hours one Sunday to see 
a meadow in the mountains of Arizona. We stood 
behind a split-rail fence. “It’s beautiful,” 
my dad said. “It’s for sale. If we had money 
we’d buy it.” And we climbed the fence 
and wandered that acre of wildflowers and ferns, 
ate fried chicken and picked up our litter, 
and went home. 

At Bay

There are no waves on the bay side of the peninsula. The tide simply licks up and back, up and back on the sand shore. Beyond the shore, tall sailboats of vivid blues, greens, and…

Eve’s Offering

Sacred, subtle slavery, the mother’s task 
That burden of creation’s holy power. 
To love a clot of flesh and never ask 
If it deserves its soul at chosen hour. 

An Interview with David Sjodahl King

David S. King has led a life exceptional for its combination of public and ecclesiastical service. His parents were Vera Sjodahl King (1891-1955) and William Henry King (1862-1949), a four-term U.S. Senator from Utah. Born…

Afield

Just off the highway 
in the setting sun 
cattle gather on a hill. 
My foot lets up 

“Who Shall Sing If Not the Children?” Primary Songbooks, 1880-1989

In 1989, the Primary Association released a new songbook for Mormondom’s children, its first since 1969. Evaluating it for a professional hymnody publication, one reviewer commented: “This handsome volume’s 8V2 x 11″ pages exude a special kind of coziness…. The plentiful decorative illustrations use pastel colors exclusively—and so, in their way, do most of the songs…. [F]or every song about a specifically Mormon doc trine or practice, at least four would fit into practically any Christian, in deed any civilized context.”

Toward a “Marriage Group” of Contemporary Mormon Short Stories

In a now canonical article in 1912, “Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage,” George Lyman Kittredge applied the term “marriage group” to a subset among Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: the Wife of Bath (and her polemic and confessional prologue), the Clerk, the Merchant, and the Franklin. Later scholars sometimes enlarged the group or questioned the inclusion of various tales, but it has persisted as an object of critical attention. Obviously, in proposing a “marriage group” of contemporary Mormon short stories, I cannot expect to discover the kind of “conversation” or “debate” that Chaucerians from Kittredge to Kaske and beyond have analyzed.