These eighteen essays span more than thirty years of Lavina Fielding Anderson’s concerns about and reflections on issues of inclusiveness in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including her own excommunication for “apostasy” in 1993, followed by twenty-five years of continued attendance at weekly LDS ward meetings. Written with a taste for irony and an eye for documentation, the essays are timeless snapshots of sometimes controversial issues, beginning with official resistance to professionally researched Mormon history in the 1980s. They underscore unanswered questions about gender equality and repeatedly call attention to areas in which the church does not live up to its better self. Compassionately and responsibly, it calls Anderson’s beloved religion back to its holiest nature.

Lavina Fielding Anderson, president of Editing, Inc., is a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of Signature Books, former trustee of the Mormon Alliance and, with Janice M. Allred, co-­editor of the Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance. She is former editor and/or copy editor of the Journal of Mormon History, the Association for Mormon Letters Annual, the Ensign, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. She is the editor of Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Signature Books, 2001) and is currently researching Lucy’s Life: A Biography of Lucy Mack Smith. She is the recipient of the Grace Fort Arrington Award for Distinguished Service (1991), the O. Marvin Lewis Award for Best Essay (1995),  the Special Merit Award for Exceptional Service (1995), the Eve Award (1999), and co-recipient of the John Whitmer Historical Association award for Outstanding Bibliographical Essays (2005).