Fiction
Recommended
Bode and Iris
Listen to the piece here. It may seem odd that an experienced fornicator like Bode Carpenter would get the girl pregnant in the first place—particularly because he carried a condom in the watch pocket of…
Excerpts from Before Us Like a Land of Dreams
From “Homing” In which our protagonist, a crabby aging mother and professor, drives from Salt Lake City to her father’s birthplace—Safford, Arizona—to visit an infant’s gravesite. Year: 2016. Grandma Anderson said one of the best…
Resurrection
Since he was a child, he’d dreamed of himself in one form and woken up, always disappointed, always jolted by the reality and by the way that others looked at him. In the first years,…
With Marbles for Eyes
As they crested the final hill into town, the speed limit dropped and the noise from the tires was quieter and less constant. Travis looked out Sarah’s window and she looked at him like he…
Light Departure
For Doug Thayer There was a knock at the apartment door. My companion, Carr, slouched at his desk, tinkering with a delicate butterfly he’d just formed from a piece of thin copper wire he’d retrieved…
City of Saints
When Dennis Cormier arrived on the fifteenth floor of the Church Office Building in downtown Salt Lake City, his first appointment was already waiting. The visitor was fleshy, jowls and hips, about Dennis’ age, and…
Duties of a Deacon
I never got to do it when I was a twelve-year-old Mormon boy even if it is, technically, as much a duty of a deacon as passing the sacrament—and I doubted anyone in my presidency…
The Pew
Helen realizes at church Sunday morning that still, after all these years, she does not have fond feelings for the chapel. She doesn’t want to hold on to any grudges against it—she doesn’t take it…
The Shyster
Arne met Leanne Holburn at church during his final year in an MBA program at the University of Washington. He found her very attractive. Of medium height, she had sculpted cheeks, an aquiline nose, and…
Come to Zion
Six months after she’d divorced her most recent husband, Sue kicked back the silk sheets one chilly morning and decided to take back her maiden name. She packed her bags, grabbed a cab to Charles…