Edward A. GearyCritiques

Up close, local, and insightful. Motivating to get a camper and get out there.

This is a collection of essays about growing up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the west. Geary was born in 1937 and grew up in Huntington, Utah. For this book he won the "Association for Mormon Letters Essay Prize". He does not shy away from presenting the "warts" of the Church and Mormon culture.

I'm 25 years younger than Geary, and my own Utah boyhood was confined to the summer months, since, as a child, I lived in Missouri during the school year, but Poplarhaven's description of life in small-town Utah really resonated with me. Geary has a remarkable ability to see (and to help his readers to see) the beauty in the humble things in rural Utah: tumbledown outbuildings, dilapidated fences, irrigation ditches, orchards, alfalfa fields, etc. I have a relief map of the Castle Valley area where Geary grew up, and it has been fun to follow along on that map as Geary describes the geographical features that helped shape his early life. When Geary describes the foibles of the people around him, I never get the feeling that he is sneering.