The backslider

Deep in the recesses of the Mormon heart, Jesus is an experienced but unpretentious cowboy who, like our own rugged fathers, watches over us with kind and sparing advice. Enter Frank Wind-ham, a hard-working Mormon, trying to be good but convinced he's on the road to hell. He has an ultra-pious mother, a brother who is more than just a little touched in the head, and a comfortable Lu-theran girlfriend who professes to have been saved. An expression of the human struggle with imperfection and hope of redemption, The Backslider is a landmark in Mormon fiction, now issued in an illustrated fine edition on its twentieth anniversary.