Of these years of her life, poet, writer, and feminist Carol Lynn Pearson says, “The plot thickens, as all good plots do. My life and your life—if we are brave enough—move into areas that we had not anticipated. We feel sometimes that we want to run back to safer ground, but life has decided otherwise and so we take those next steps. Volume two of my diaries gives us a closeup of the years 1990 to 2002, bringing us an abundance of both joy and distress.”

Throughout the 1990s, Pearson records and laments her church’s efforts to punish scholars and activists while celebrating the success of her books and one-woman play, Mother Wove the Morning. Along the way, she comforts the suffering, endures terrible personal loss, and witnesses the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11. “Bless everyone who fights for what is right,” she writes.  Few have fought harder than Carol Lynn Pearson.

Carol Lynn Pearson describes herself as a troublemaker and a problem solver. A fourth-generation Latter-day Saint who grew up in Utah and now lives in California, she loves the church that molded her into a spirited feminist and activist, courageous enough to challenge harmful concepts, even those of her own religious community. Her first collection of poems, Beginnings, sold more than 150,000 copies, followed by numerous books, lyrics, and stage plays. Her 1986 bestseller, Goodbye, I Love You, tells of her marriage to a gay man, Gerald Pearson, their eventual divorce, and her caring for him in her home as he died from AIDS. The profound impact of this story marked a turning point in the national perception of the gay community.