When religious indoctrination clashes with reality, the outcome can’t always be predicted. In these stories by the author of Please Evacuate and Inferno in the French Quarter, a Seminary teacher threatens to kill his students. A schizophrenic woman in a hurricane evacuation shelter finds love. A Relief Society president’s silicone breast implants develop into a new life form. A sister missionary suffocating under family pressure volunteers to be held hostage during a bank robbery. A teenage girl is haunted by the ghost of Emma Smith. A devout Mormon takes up sex work to raise money to help the poor.
Sometimes, behavior that seems perfectly reasonable in one culture can seem disturbing to those outside it. But whether reasonable or disturbing, their stories can also make compelling reading.
Зміст
The Pledge
Taking Off the Mask
The Day I Killed My Seminary Teacher
A Little Test
Glory Hole Ethics
Leadership Roulette
Working Out
Zombies for Jesus
Shark among the Whales
The Bishop’s Confession
A Life of Their Own
The Ghost of Emma Smith
Food for Lack of Thought
By Any Means Necessary
A Hostage for the Lord
Про автора
A climate crisis immigrant who relocated from New Orleans to Seattle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Johnny Townsend wrote the first account of the Up Stairs Lounge fire, an attack on a French Quarter gay bar which killed 32 people in 1973. He was an associate producer for the documentary Upstairs Inferno, for the sci-fi film Time Helmet, and for the deaf gay short Flirting, with Possibilities. His books include Please Evacuate, Racism by Proxy, and Wake Up and Smell the Missionaries. His novel, Orgy at the STD Clinic, set entirely on public transit, details political extremism, climate upheaval, and anti-maskers in the midst of a pandemic.