by Category
by Year
2007
AML Award:
Marilyn Brown Novel Award
Honorable Mention
Presented to:
Helynne Hollstein Hansen
For:
Voices at the Crossroads
Voices at the Crossroads
by Helynne Hollstein Hansen is an intelligent, ambitious novel that takes a collegiate coming-of-age story and elevates it to a unique exploration of French philosophy, Mormon culture, the pressures of academia, and the costs and benefits of individualism. By utilizing the voices of multiple narrators, Hansen is able to combine discussions of esoteric philosophical ideas with a fairly simple, but compelling, love story—and all this sprinkled with a dash of the supernatural. One character’s frequent otherworldly visitations by French philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir are not only believable, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of this novel. Hanson deserves much credit for bringing so many disparate themes together to create a truly original work of fiction.