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Theology: Sealed by Katie Langston. Excuse a little self-indulgent pride here; I’m the publisher of record for Langston’s incredible memoir and have to give it a shout-out! You might be wondering how a memoir is masquerading as a theology book here, but let me assure you, it is. Langston grew up Mormon in Utah. She took her family’s faith with utmost seriousness… and that’s where the trouble began. Most ex-Mormon memoirs fixate on sensationalistic claims of revelation and/or sexual psychosis. Langston instead zeroes in on the theological heart of the matter: there is no grace here. All love, all hope, all goodness are downstream of your own religious and moral performance. If you fail, you lose everything, with no court of appeal. Langston narrates her slow-motion break with Mormonism, her turn toward Christianity, and finally the intense theological and spiritual wrestling that brought her to baptism. If there is deconstructing in this memoir—as seems to be the vogue among wounded Evangelical Protestants these days—it is all in the service of reconstructing. Long-term Christians will learn a lot about their own faith from her discoveries. As a plus, it is a fantastically helpful window into Mormonism for those who (like me before I read it) know nothing about this “fourth Abrahamic religion.” I’ve heard from other readers how helpful it’s been for Mormons who’ve found their way into Christian congregations, but I think it would be helpful for anyone who isn’t quite sure what grace is, and whether it can be trusted. (It can!) Cookbook: The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen. Thielen got her culinary training in New York, where most assuredly the Midwest is flyover country—not only culturally, but gastronomically as well. Once she returned back home to northern Minnesota, she set out to prove them wrong. And boy, did she ever. This is one of my most cooked-from cookbooks (no small thing when you consider I have to source the ingredients in Tokyo). Some of the dishes will be familiar, but her chef’s training bumps them up a notch to exquisite. Among my many, many favorites are Cracker-Crust Pizza, Sweet-and-Sour Potluck Meatballs, Smoky Sauerkraut Soup, Wild Rice and Smoked Chicken Soup, Tourtière (French-Canadian Meat Pie), Rutabaga Bake, Crispy Lengua Hash, Fermented Dill Pickles, Spring Chive Oil, Persimmon Pudding, Poppy-Seed Streusel Bars, and the very best recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies, ever. Novel: The Backslider by Levi Peterson. The aforementioned Katie Langston mentioned this novel to me, which I read and loved, despite its concluding pretty much in the exact opposite arrangement as in Langston’s memoir—i.e., the Lutheran girl ends up converting to Mormonism in order to marry the novel’s protagonist, Frank. But this book is a long way from a triumphalistic narrative with proselytism as its covert goal, as the title already suggests. Frank is in every way a bad Mormon, tortured over his failures, resentful of his duties, making a mess of everything. The Utah setting and cast of bizarre characters make for a great read. The ending is both typically Mormon and quite possibly an inversion of everything Mormonism stands for. Langston’s longing for grace is only the tip of an iceberg that runs very deep in that desert.
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