The Latter Days - by Judith Freeman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

At twenty-two, Judith Freeman--born and raised in a Mormon community--had abandoned her faith, but found herself working in the church-owned department store in the Utah town where she grew up. She was in the process of divorcing the man she'd married at age seventeen and was living in her parents' house with her four-year-old son, who had already endured two heart surgeries. The surgeon, a rising star in his field, had become her lover. It was at this fraught moment that she decided to become a writer.

In this moving memoir, Freeman explores the circumstances and choices that informed her course, and those that allowed her to find a way forward. In shimmering prose, she gives us an illuminating, singular portrait of resilience and forgiveness, of memory and hindsight, and of the ways in which we come to identify our truest selves.

Review Quotes

"Strong and deep, a raging river of a story. . . . It is an arrow straight from Mormon country, from the Mountain West and from the heart." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A brave and valuable book." --Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness

"Tender. . . . Flows slowly, a gentle stream of recollections . . . coalescing into eloquence." --Chicago Tribune

"A compelling story, compulsively readable, and its authorial voice--calm, keen-eyed, gracious but only to a point--still rings inside me." --Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

"Moving. . . . A rich and revealing personal history. . . . Her story is one of family succor and sorrow; and the flickering origins of shame. This is an affecting and tender memoir as Ms. Freeman displays the dark wonder of the forces that shape our life choices." --Ron Carlson, author of Return to Oakpine

"Searing. . . . Revelatory. . . . There is always great pleasure for the reader in her exacting, sensory descriptions." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"The Latter Days arrived at four P.M. and I read until midnight, unable to leave. . . . Freeman sends rays of light straight into the reader's heart." --Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here
"Poignant. . . . Freeman writes with the clear voice of a person who's (mostly) shed the trappings of the past." --Publishers Weekly

"A novelist's account of her early life growing up Mormon in Utah and the family memories she kept hidden from herself. . . . highly readable. . . . A poignant, searching memoir of self discovery." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Judith Freeman is the author of four novels--Red Water, The Chinchilla Farm, Set for Life, and A Desert of Pure Feeling--and of Family Attractions, a collection of stories, and The Long Embrace, a biography of Raymond Chandler. She lives in California and Idaho.

www.judithfreeman.net