2007
AML Award:
Marilyn Brown Novel Award
Presented to:
Todd Petersen
For:
Rift
Jens Thorson is a wise-but-grouchy, rural-Utah retiree, who feuds with his
bishop, buries his longsuffering wife, and rescues Angie, a wayward girl who
happens to be his enemy’s daughter. Aided by his band of brothers who “slum”
at the barbershop, Thorson’s charitable habits collide with the inevitable
orneriness brought on by the twilight of his life, whether it be fixing a
screen door in the wind, rescuing his neighbor’s home from a flood by using
a stolen backhoe, or offering a post-modern hometeaching message that
attributes evil and suffering to a chaotic world. When Angie’s pregnancy
fails, Thorson’s last-ditch attempt for greatness evaporates at the
departure of a young woman he neither understood nor held close. Although
the MBNA judges had suggestions for the novel (as they did all the contest
novels this year), Petersen’s prose was so accurately earthy and dry—like
the desert surrounding the fictitious hamlet in central Utah. It seemed as
if the author were paying homage to another Petersen (Levi, no relation) as
well as John Bennion, Lee Nelson, and other Utah desert novelists who employ
the Old Testament God of the Wilderness as a harsh judge who only grudgingly
meters out His mercy to an occasional dutiful son. Interestingly, Jens
Thorsen could be viewed as a imitation of Levi Petersen himself: brimming
with charity but lacking an appropriate measure of political-correct—scratch
that—religious correctness, and cursed with just the right amount of moral
indignation. Kudos to the younger Petersen for capturing the essence of
angels who happen to take the form of crotchety old Utahns.
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