"Selling the City of Enoch" by Johnny Townsend

--This review was originally posted on Main Street Plaza.

Johnny Townsend has done it again. He’s delivered more deliciously subversive Mormon fiction in his delightful new collection, Selling the City of Enoch.

As in his previous works, Townsend’s well-drawn characters are too complex to fit into the Mormon cookie-cutter mold. For example, the overly curious Sister Covino who can’t look the other way when her mission president’s wife appears to have been murdered. Or Lucy, a recent convert who, lacking the human connections she’d hoped to form in her new ward, resorts to renting a family for the Christmas holiday. Similarly disenfranchised, an ambitious Wiccan politician lamely aspires to be the mayor of Salt Lake City—that is, until he has an alien encounter while hiking Bryce Canyon. And then there is the charming Mrs. Mariposa, the title character of my favorite story in the collection, who marries the love of her life in the Mormon temple and then surprises him with the news that she isn’t technically a woman.

Selling the City of Enoch exists at that awkward intersection where the LDS ideal meets the real world, and Townsend navigates his terrain with humor, insight and pathos.

Order this great read here.

I Wish I'd Written This Book

The Complete Mystery of Matthew Alcott: Heritage of Secrets

by Michael Oborn

It was his editor who did the talking and, God bless her, she didn't mince words.

"We received a second-party offer to purchase your manuscript, Mr. Alcott. It's a kill fee and it's for a considerable amount of money."

"It's a direct buy-out, Sam," the attorney Vincent interjected.

"Yes," she said, turning to her secretary, Glenda something. "Do you have it?"

Glenda handed her boss an off-white envelope. Sam pushed it into the middle of the table in Matt's direction. It rested there, on the glass surface. Five pair of eyes focused on it like the last piece of chocolate. 

When Matthew Alcott finishes his honest and meticulously researched biography of Joseph Smith, some high-ranking officials in the Mormon Church offer him 2 million dollars to keep from publishing it.--Like I said, I wish I'd written this book. But it's lucky I didn't, because a chicken like me would have taken the money and run.

Not the case with journalist and researcher Matt Alcott, the fearless hero of Michael Oborn's exciting thriller, The Complete Mystery of Matthew Alcott: Heritage of Secrets. Recovering from both Mormonism and alcoholism, Matt escapes Salt Lake City and then Las Vegas to a tiny town in upstate New York where he gets sober, finds love, reclaims his writer's voice, and begins to live an authentic life. But when news of his lucrative book deal reaches Salt Lake City, he is immediately pulled back to Utah and the hell he worked so hard to leave behind.

As the story weaves back and forth in time, Oborn's writing is consistently as solid as the passage above, his dialogue witty and entertaining, and his characters engaging--from the self-important Mormon patriarchs, to the desert denizens scattered around Zion's periphery. For example, the sexy herpetologist "without tan lines," and the Salt Lake based bikers who call themselves "The Twelve Apostles."

My one tiny criticism is that some passages are a bit long on explanation. But then, I speak from the perspective of a former Mormon who is already too familiar with the author's subject. Readers who are not so fortunate as to have belonged to the "one and only true church" will probably welcome these bits of exposition. And nothing gets in the way of Oborn's fact paced, thrill-packed plot.

Ready for an adventure? Order it here.