Kail Lambert spends the summer after high school graduation traveling the country, hoping to make it all the way to San Francisco before returning home to Illinois. However, a broken motorcycle leaves him stuck in Idaho, where he surprises himself by falling in love with the mountains and the local culture. He converts to Mormonism and marries Charlene Simmons—a perfect Mormon girl deeply dedicated to her church.

After a fifteen-year hiatus in Arizona, Kail moves his family back to Idaho to solve some unresolved issues between his wife and God. What he and Charlene find are shocking surprises beneath the surface of every beautiful thing, from the Idaho mountains to Charlene’s deceptively devout family. Acclaimed author Jack Harrell creates a world of complex and troubled characters, each seeking happiness from a God simultaneously familiar and mysterious, each wrestling with the doubts and eternal optimism integral to their faith.

A native of southeastern Illinois, Jack Harrell is the author of Vernal Promises, which won the Marilyn Brown Novel Award, and A Sense of Order and Other Stories, awarded best short story collection in 2011 by the Association for Mormon Letters. His book Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism won the 2017 criticism award from AML. Harrell has published on topics ranging from Mormon literary theory to the aesthetics of death metal music. He teaches writing at Brigham Young University–Idaho.