The Path and the Gate: A Look at Contemporary Mormon Fiction

Signature Books Podcast

In today’s podcast, we talk with Andrew Hall, associate professor of East Asian History at Kyushu University, and Robert Raleigh, editor of In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions, published by Signature Books.

Their current book, The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction, is a collection of twenty-three short stories stemming from the prompt, “The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi describes the journey to eternal life as going through a gate of ordinances and traveling a ‘straight and narrow path.’” Many stories are human reactions to unexpected steps on the path: a lifetime of faith in a patriarchal blessing’s unfulfilled promise, a survivor of violence calling a divided community to repentance, a baptism gone very wrong, and spiritual gifts that extend far beyond the apostle Paul’s list. The characters stretch from wayward bishops and helpful home teachers to cyber-­Seventies searching for lost sheep in the metaverse, with settings from the slums of Mumbai to a heaven that turns out to be more difficult than expected. Some characters reject the path’s restrictions and expectations, while others can second the reported words of J. Golden Kimball, “I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure as hell try to cross it as often as I can.”
Join us as Andrew and Robert answer questions about the book’s genesis, and why Mormon fiction matters.
The Path and The Gate: Mormon Short Fiction releases October 16th in both paperback and ebook.