Until he moved to Utah, author Todd Robert Petersen had no idea there was a whole canon of LDS fiction. He had never been inside a Deseret Book. He didn't know there were other Mormon writers interested in delving into both the intricacies and humorous aspects of their culture.Now he has published two award-winning books — both exploring the quirks of and relationships between Mormon characters."I actually found it useful to be naïve about the culture," said Petersen, 40, a resident of Cedar City, Utah. "I didn't have to worry that someone else had covered what I wanted to write about. I just jumped in and began to carve out a little space for myself."Petersen was raised in a staunch Catholic family in Portland, Ore., and attended a Jesuit high school before going on to study film at the University of Oregon."The University of Oregon in the '80s was an interesting place to be," Petersen said. "And certainly a strange place to find religion."In the midst of the wildness and late nights of college life, Petersen discovered and was baptized into the LDS Church at age 21."All my friends thought it was stupid," he said. "They were like, 'Couldn't you have waited so you could have enjoyed a year of legally going to bars?'"But Petersen knew what he believed and held strong despite peer pressure. He struggled to understand the new community he was a part of. "I was used to the 'real world,'" he said. "I was looking to stabilize my faith."For Petersen, writing had always been a safe harbor. He used to dream of going to Hollywood to become a major screenwriter, but he was averse to submersing himself in the L.A. scene.Instead he began to work more with short stories and poems — and experimenting writing about his newfound faith."I knew that other religions had authors within them writing fiction pieces about their cultures — like Catholics, Jews — but I was unaware of a world where people wrote about LDS things," Petersen said. "I thought I was being pretty fancy, wanting to write about it."He finished graduate school at Northern Arizona University before moving to Oklahoma State to pursue a doctorate in creative writing and critical theory. There he met and married his wife, Alisa, in the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Temple.They moved to southern Utah, where they settled and became the proud parents of two children. Petersen was hired by Southern Utah University, where he currently teaches creative writing and visual studies.Petersen said he fell in love with southern Utah. "It was a completely new experience to, in Mormon language, be living in Zion."Petersen described himself as initially being a "supreme outsider" who benefited from his wife being "dialed in," or coming from traditional pioneer stock. As he learned, coming into the culture from what he describes as "sideways," he continued to work on his story ideas in hopes of getting them published.But Petersen pointed out how the entertainment world at large is only interested in Mormons if there's "polygamy, violence or salamanders involved.""So when I tried to shop around my LDS stories in New York, publishers were like, 'We don't get it,'" Petersen said. "They have this idea of a Mormon person constructed in their heads, this stereotype. A Mormon as an ordinary, struggling person seems impossible."Petersen eventually found a home with Zarahemla Books and had "Long After Dark," a collection of short stories and a novella, published in 2007. It was given the ARTYS award by Salt Lake City Weekly.His new full-length novel "Rift" has just been released, having already received the Marilyn Brown Novel award in 2008 for best unpublished novel focusing on realistic cultural experiences of the Utah region.The idea for "Rift" germinated in part from his enjoyment of listening to the life stories of older Mormons — especially his wife's Sanpete County relatives."When we'd go to Sanpete, I literally thought 'this is the place' to do a book," Petersen said.He didn't feel weighed down with the need to accurately portray critical periods in Mormon history, like writing about the pioneers. He merely wanted to write about human interactions, about "people who happen to be Mormon as opposed to writing about 'Mormon people,'" he said.He enjoyed exploring "themes" of Mormonism, such as loving one another even when it's difficult or belief in modern revelation."I love that we talk to God — and it's not weird," Petersen said.Despite aspects of faith that connect Mormons, Petersen also embraces the differences. "You have people that are really orthodox and people that are on the outside and everything in-between," he said. "There is so much diversity that people don't appreciate because they think we're living in this white-faced Mormon utopia here in Utah."Petersen hopes that people outside of the faith will benefit from his writing, getting a flavor for the culture he embraced. "I want people to pick up (my books) and say, 'Oh, I've got these Mormon neighbors and what are they all about?'" he said. "They will realize that we're regular people with regular problems — we're not crazy."
E-mail: eschmuhl@desnews.com