Spanning three decades,
Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot
is an alternately offbeat, literate, and highly personal novel that delves into the politics of family, religion, and friendship, as seen through the eyes of a young woman who becomes Mormon.
As the child of European immigrants, she grows up feeling misunderstood and left out. Her anxiety leads her to want to become Mormon in order to fit in with her best friend and her family. This is a novel of the new world; in particular, the experience of children of immigrants, and how they cling to vestiges of a past that never seems real enough.