August 28, 2006
Evenson (Altmann's Tongue
) explores some controversial Mormon history in this thoughtful thriller rooted in an actual century-old murder case. When Rudd, a disaffected, fatherless Mormon teenager living in an unspecified part of Utah, discovers he has a half-brother, Lael, in suburban Provo, the two meet and embark on a strange friendship. While researching a school project, Rudd learns from a series of stories in the New York Times
about a murder committed by William Hooper Young, a grandson of Brigham Young, the Mormon pioneer. In 1902, William Young was tried for, and convicted of, the murder of Anna Pulitzer. The crime cast a dark shadow on the Church of the Latter-Day Saints by exposing such arcane, perhaps doctrinal concepts as "blood atonement," a disturbing idea about the saving of a Mormon soul by shedding someone else's blood. This macabre backstory, coupled with Rudd's increasingly fractured mental state, results in a contemporary gothic tale about the apocalyptic connection between religion and violence.
September 1, 2006
Evenson lost his teaching post at Brigham Young University because his writing was too implicitly critical of the Mormon Church. Continuing to mine the violent history of the religion, he makes a murder committed in 1902 by a grandson of Mormon prophet Brigham Young one of the central plot strands of his latest novel. Raised in a troubled but strict religious home, teenage misfit Rudd gradually pulls away from his oppressive mother, inventing a new family and new world for himself. When he is found at the scene of a double murder with little memory of the preceding events, he forms a unique bond with 19-year-old Lyndi, the daughter of the victims. The two, barely recovered from the gruesome events, start to lose track of time and to call each other by the names of the perpetrators of the 1902 murder. The Mormon angle is not what is most interesting about this uncompromising novel; instead, it's the convincing portrayal of a disturbed young man pushed to the breaking point by social isolation and religious extremism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)
September 1, 2006
In this novel, set in Utah, Rudd Theurer is a disturbed teenager from a troubled home. Discovering his late father's letters, he learns of a possible half-brother and eventually finds (or possibly invents) another teenager, Lael Korth. Past and present mingle as Rudd's fascination with an early 20th-century Mormon murder involving blood-sacrifice rites leads him and Lael to murder a picnicking family, a crime in which Rudd himself is seriously injured. The only survivor, the family's teenage daughter, Lyndi, thinks that Rudd was an unfortunate innocent at the scene and befriends him, eventually becoming involved with him. His increasingly bizarre behavior centers on a twisted identification with the earlier murderer and leads, potentially, to another crime. Though clues are provided regarding the sources of Rudd's problems, the reader never learns enough to view him as more than a psychotic monster. Ex-Mormon Evenson ("The Wavering Knife: Stories") intends this as an exploration of Mormonism's dark underside. While the novel may strike a chord with those of similar background, it won't resonate with the general reader." -Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA "
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.