"Godforsaken Idaho: Stories" by Shawn Vestal ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author, raised as a Mormon
• Debut
• Originally published in 2013
• Short Stories
• Epigraph:  "And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin.  If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness.  And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.  And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery.  And if these things are not there is no God.  And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.".....The Book of Mormon
• "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death"
• Author's vision of heaven
• p.1..."You eat from your own life only."
• p.2..."Your age at death becomes your age forever."
• p.3..."If you want peace, you have to find it in the life you left behind."
• You're allowed to re-live moments/events as many times as you want to.  "But you find it hard to land in a single untroubled moment.  Every second is crowded with life, with misery and anxiety that just won't be stomped down."
• p.27...narrator's perfect moment of peace...."I hear the wind sound of planes.  The air smells like sweet hay and cow shit.  My mind hums.  I light one cigarette off another and watch the butt tumble out of sight into the canyon below.  I am entirely alone.  The emptiness makes a sound that takes in everything."
• p.8..."You know it when people you love die."
• "About as Fast as This Car Will Go"
• Paroled father takes on his teenage son....life of crime begins
• p.29..."I never wanted to be a criminal until I was one."....the son
• p.37..."...some part of fearing is expecting."
• "Families Are Forever!"
• Pathological liar
• p.51...."That's why I lied to her so much.  Out of love."...narrator has something to hide about his life before meeting Gina.....we never find out what it was
• p.70..."There are times when your groove and the groove of all things just line up and become the same groove."...Like that
• "Pocket Dog"
• a pocket dog is one of the tiny designer dogs often carried around by beautiful, rich women
• p.72..."Out here we're bound to feel a dog like that is just wrong."
• Grandma (rancher). Lanny (hired man), and Simon (dissolute grandson)
• p.74..."Grandma said the problem around here started with the death of work.  The place just doesn't run on work any more--it runs on leisure, on fly fishing and mountain biking and skiing.  People moving in with their money already made."
• Grandma and Lanny save Simon from himself, from being a "pocket dog"
• "Godforsaken Idaho"
• Pressure builds until narrator commits act of violence
• Life of social isolation
• "Winter Elders"
• p.110...."It was the smile of every man he had met in church, the bishops and first counselors and stake presidents, the benevolent mask, the put-on solemnity, the utter falseness."...missionaries who come to the door relentlessly
• p.111..."...Bradshaw kept waiting for it to happen.  The flash of light.  The surge of joy.  Some brightness shining through the visible world.......The thing behind the thing.  Cheryl called it 'an animating force.'"
• Anger at the faith of the missionaries.  "It was that Pope had something he could not have, and he would spend his life not having it."
• Again, pressure to believe results in act of violence
• "Opposition in All Things"
• Narrator dies and returns inside another person, a navy veteran who cannot forgive himself for killing despite the Mormon congregation saying killing and war were not the same thing
• Another tale of social isolation leading to violence
• p.145..."I was waiting along with Rulon for an opposing force, for something to press against.  Something in this world, some person or idea, was the opposite of me, and I needed to crash into it to become whoever or whatever I was."
• "Gulls":
• Locusts descend on Idaho farm.....Mormon community faces terrible losses
• Sara, has visions, seeks truth
• p.169..."She wanted to believe in it like her father and mother did, wanted to hear the voice of revelation herself."
• p.176..."This is how the voice of the Lord stays silent on Earth."....picking and choosing what God is responsible for
• "Diviner":
• Joseph Smith's scams in many communities
• He marries a skeptic's daughter
• Father lives with them in disbelief, but chooses it over isolation and lonliness
• Review:  Hmmmm...definitely an interesting collection of stories.....definitely some dark tales.....definitely a theme about questioning faith and/or organized religion......definitely a sense that faith is individual and we also compromise to be part of the greater whole of our communities......definitely some godlessness......but no definitive decision on my part about the collection as a whole.  I like Vestal's writing.  It packs an emotional punch which is the reason it gets four stars.  I suggest taking a chance and reading it.  I am interested in future work by this author.