“The Christianizing of Coburn Heights” likewise does not end with a tidy happy ending. Serving a Rendella can take all the energy of a ward yet yield no measurable benefits. Or another who hung around coffee shops and told people about Joseph Smith and hell.

I knew a fellow always calling around the ward desperate for scriptural justification for his anger or tales of how he was wielding said anger. I knew a woman who, whenever someone in Sunday School might mention a difficulty they’ve experienced, would interrupt the lesson to harangue them for twenty minutes because they don’t know what suffering is like she knows what suffering is. I suppose most of us have known a fellow Saint and traveler who was hard to shepherd. I find it hard to judge this story on its literary merits alone (though these are many and excellent). Even if he comes to sympathize with her bishop’s fatalism. Rendella doesn’t make it easy, but he doesn’t give up. She’s impossible to like, but that won’t prevent the wealthy Saints’ “foremost shepherd” from loving her into normalcy. She list and lean, having not two sides, but one and a half.” In conversation, her mind seems to match her body. shortened, her arm dwindled, her breast shrunken, her cheek and ear diminished. Her “entire left side atrophied: her leg. No one was excommunicated these days for contentiousness”) and initially dismisses the bishop’s proclaimed desire as a bit of irony.Įverything about Rendella screams damaged. Sherman’s heard of Rendella from her bishop (who wants to excommunicate her for contentiousness. The poor must come to them, in the form of Rendella Kranpitz, before the poor become anything more than an abstraction. Sherman Colligan, on the other hand, and his stake have never thought to question the rightness of their dripping wealth. In Card’s story, Helaman feels guilt over his wealth and comes up with a plan to share his largesse with the poor of his community. Like the eponymous hero of Orson Scott Card’s “Christmas at Helaman’s House” (available in Dispensation and Keeper of Dreams), our stake president lives in the foothills, on the bench surrounding the Salt Lake Valley, among his fellow rich. Unlike his famous The Backslider, the hero of this story is not a dirty ole backslid cowboy but a rich stake president from the hills looking down upon Salt Lake City. Welcome back! After a Bright Angels & Familiars hiatus (that we might better engage with Mormon Lit Blitz), we are picking up with a terrific story from Levi Peterson.

The Backslider by Levi S. Peterson