Biography-Memoir

Educated: A Memoir

This book stems from a profoundly foundational family squabble. Westover’s parents practice a strictly conservative form of Mormonism in Idaho. They follow the virtue of self-reliance to the point that they did not put their children into school or get them birth certificates. However, some of their children, like the author, ended up making their ways into college and eventually graduate school. This memoir tells one daughter’s life from rural Idaho into BYU and eventually…

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Fiction-Stories History Religion-Philosophy

The Fire & the Ore: A Novel

This book is an exploration of polygamy – i.e., plural marriage – how it forms and how it operates. It’s an exploration of a topic that is controversial because of its place in early Mormon society and curious because it runs contrary to how much of society has organized itself. I live in the American South and am a Protestant Christian. Southern Christians would never deign to practice public plural marriages. (Polyamory is another matter,…

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