The perfect Mormon wife in the perfect Mormon town has a secret: she doesn’t believe in God. Her husband has a secret, too: he’s in love with another man. She’s stood by her husband for two years, tending their secrets, fading into the easy background of Rexburg, Idaho. But when she meets a man who calls himself “X,” an untidy, beer-drinking artist on a rambling sabbatical through the Western States, her resolve to be the perfect wife finally crumbles. At first her affair with X is just another secret to keep. He’ll be gone soon, and no one will be the wiser. But she quickly realizes she can no longer be content with the structured, wholesome life of a Rexburg woman. Though she fears her husband’s reaction and the town’s rejection, she leaves to join X on his journey through the Rockies. Amid mountains and deserts, surrounded by art and creation, she discovers the realities of eternity. But just as she is beginning to build a life without religion, a death in the family pulls her and X back to Rexburg. She must return to the place that created and confined her, this time not as the perfect Mormon wife, but as something monstrous to the people she loves.
Author
Libbie was born in Rexburg, Idaho and divided her childhood between Eastern Idaho's rural environs and the greater Seattle area. She presently lives in Seattle, but has also been a resident of Salt Lake City, Utah; Bellingham, Washington; and Tacoma, Washington. She loves to write about character and place, and is inspired by the bleak natural beauty of the Rocky Mountain region and by the fascinating history of the Puget Sound. After three years of trying to break into the publishing industry with her various books under two different pen names, Libbie finally turned her back on the mainstream publishing industry and embraced independent publishing. She now writes her self-published fiction full-time, and enjoys the fact that the writing career she always dreamed of having is fully under her own control. Libbie's writerly influences are varied, and include Vladimir Nabokov, Hilary Mantel, Annie Dillard, George R. R. Martin, songwriter Neko Case, and mixed-media storyteller Chris Onstad, to name but a few. She previously wrote under the pen name L.M. Ironside (historical fiction).
