More joyous than cynical, it sympathizes deeply with the plight of all of God's backsliders.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 09:26:32 Autocrop_version 0.0.13_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA40529224 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Shifting from one to another, it builds suspense and elicits complex emotions, among them a profound sense of compassion.
It can be read as a love story, a satiric comedy, or a dark and sobering study of self-mutilation. The story engages readers as it alternates almost imperceptibly between Frank's naive consciousness and the more informed awareness of its narrator. 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. Frank comes into contact with a host of rural and urban characters. 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. 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.
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