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On fiction as catharsis

Writing, for me — and story for the human race — is very much an attempt to make sense out of things that are basically senseless. Story is also a way to feel like we had control over the world. I feel like we struggled a lot after my daughter's death with the sense that every time my children left the house that they could die at any moment. And just that anybody that I knew could die at any moment and coming to terms with that. ... I think religious people try to cover up that truth by saying, "Well, everything happens according to God's plan." And I think Linda [the main character in the book] finds a way to mesh those two that I am still working on personally. She feels like there can still be random events and God can still exist without necessarily him planning for those things to happen. That's not what her belief in God is for. It's not to give her a false sense of control. But that was what I really had used God for, and when I lost that I couldn't figure out how to believe in God again.

On how she expects the Mormon community to react to this book

I worried that Mormons will feel like the story is pointing a finger at them, trying to expose the worst parts of Mormonism, and I don't really mean it to be taken in that way. ... I feel like a lot of the problems that are in Mormonism exist everywhere but they do have a different meaning within Mormonism — I think we talk about those problems in a different way. I've heard some feedback from a few Mormons who have been unhappy with the book — one person said that I had an agenda and that she felt like that agenda was very anti-men. I've been puzzling over that because I feel like there are so many really great men in the book. Kurt, the bishop himself, is, I think, a great man. And then Brad Ferris, who comes up later in the book, is another really, really solid man.

But yeah, there are bad male characters and there are bad female characters. I think that for Mormons they're used to seeing Mormons depicted either only as all bad, and then there are the Mormon books that are written for a Mormon audience and then the Mormons are all good in those books. ... And I am treating Mormons as someone looking at Mormonism from an anthropological perspective almost and I'm not giving them a pass. I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about my particular ward's reaction to the book when it comes out.

Read an excerpt of The Bishop's Wife

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