A man struggles--literally--with his dead father. A housewife suffers from post-calling depression. The son of a polygamist comes to terms with the damage done by his upbringing. An unwed teen mother faces down her father. In these award-winning stories and a new novella, Todd Robert Petersen takes the reader on expeditions to Utah, Arizona, Brazil, Rwanda, and into the souls of twenty-first-century Mormons caught between their humanity, faith, and church.

Long After Dark

Literature & Fiction

Petersen, Todd Robert

Contemporary

Zarahemla Books

Jens Thorsen's retirement is not what his wife, Lila, was expecting. Rather than tending to things around the house, Thorsen has thrown himself into a life of charity: visiting the sick, the widowed, and the incarcerated. Between these acts of service, Thorsen finds the time to nurse his feud with local bishop Darrell Bunker. The two have hated each other for as long as anyone in Sanpete, Utah, can remember. Even though the valley is much too small for the both of them, Thorsen and the bishop have managed a tense ceasefire that allows daily life to carry on. But when the bishop's daughter moves home, there are suddenly too many egos in one place, and Sanpete starts to pull apart at the seams.

Rift

Literary

"Todd Robert Petersen is crazy-talented, and the wild, weird, hilarious stories of It Needs to Look Like We Tried are just what’s called for in these bizarre, frightening times." ―Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and Trajectory A domino chain of failures draws Todd Robert Petersen's characters together in these interconnected stories, despite hopes, dreams, and their best-laid plans Everyone has a dream, an idea, a goal. But what happens when those desires are thwarted, when dreams and goals fall apart? In It Needs to Look Like We Tried, Todd Robert Petersen explores the ways in which our failures work on the lives of others, weaving an intricate web of interconnected stories. A fastidious man takes a detour on the way to his father’s wedding and kicks off a series of events that ricochets from the bride to her real estate clients; to a crazed former homeowner and his sister-in-law’s reality TV lover; to a hoarding family whose lives are wrecked by their appearance on the second-rate show. Their daughter decides to escape the gravity of her tiny town with the help of her boyfriend who has a not-quite-legal plan to scrape together enough money to fund their departure. On their way across the country, these star-crossed lovers encounter our fastidious man, and the Rube Goldberg machine of life continues. Their fling has petered out, and they are driving home, whatever home is left after walking away from everything they abandoned months before.

It Needs to Look Like We Tried: A Novel

United States

Counterpoint

Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she unexpectedly crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a 'collector' of Native American artifacts, but instead of delivering as promised, the brothers are out to strike it rich.

Picnic in the Ruins

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Counterpoint LLC

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Books by Petersen, Todd Robert