Dead Wood and Rushing Water, Available October 29th! October 22 2013

 

Dead Wood and Rushing Water: Essays on Mormon Faith, Culture, and Family

By Boyd Jay Petersen

$22.95, 248 pages
ISBN 978-1-58958-658-1

 

Greg Kofford Books announces the release on October 29th of a new volume of essays on faith, culture, and family for Latter-day Saints. This collection is full of personal stories, insight, and subjects varied and interesting. For over a decade, Boyd Petersen has been an active voice in Mormon studies and thought. In essays that steer a course between apologetics and criticism, striving for the balance of what esteemed Mormon essayist Eugene England once called the “radical middle,” he explores various aspects of Mormon life and culture--from the Dream Mine near Salem, Utah, to the challenges that Latter-day Saints of the millennial generation face today.

Dead Wood and Rushing Water, writes prize-winning historian Richard Bushman, “gives us a reflective, striving, wise soul ruminating on his world. In the tradition of Eugene England, Petersen examines everything in his Mormon life from the gold plates to missions to dream mines to doubt and on to Glenn Beck, Hugh Nibley, and gender. It is a book I had trouble putting down.”

Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood, writes: “Boyd Petersen is correct when he says that Mormons have a deep hunger for personal stories—at least when they are as thoughtful and well-crafted as the ones he shares in this collection.”

And Kristine Haglund, editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Though, writes: “Petersen’s essays speak in the voice of the best kind of friend—the one whose company is warm and familiar and comfortable, but who still manages to surprise you, make you laugh at unexpected moments, and show you new ways to think about everything you thought you knew.” 

Dead Wood and Rushing Water will be available in paperback as well as in ebook format through Kindle, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple. It will also be the first Kofford Books title available through Amazon's new Matchbook program.