3.5
The Scholar of Moab
ByPublisher Description
2011 Best Novel, Association for Mormon letters
Montaigne Medal Finalist
“Steven Peck has imagined a world ever-so-slightly tweaked from this real one…The Scholar of Moab explores the otherworld of nature, imagination, and mind.” —BROOKE WILLIAMS, author of Halflives
What happens when a two-headed cowboy, a high school dropout, and a poet abducted by aliens come together in 1970s Moab, Utah? The Scholar of Moab, a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the hoary La Sal Mountains.
Young Hyrum Thayne, an unrefined geological surveyor, steals a massive dictionary out of the Grand County library in a midnight raid, startling the good people of Moab into believing a nefarious band of Book of Mormon thugs, the Gadianton Robbers, has arisen again. To make matters worse, Hyrum's illicit affair with Dora Tanner, a local poet thought to be mad, results in the delivery of a bouncing baby boy who vanishes the night of his birth. Righteous Moabites accuse Dora of the murder, but who really killed their child? Did a coyote dingo the baby? Was it an alien abduction as Dora claims? Was it Hyrum? Or could it have been the only witness to the crime, one of a pair of Oxford-educated conjoined twins who cowboy in the La Sals on sabbatical?
STEVEN L. PECK knows Moab, inside out. An evolutionary ecologist at Brigham Young University, Peck teaches the philosophy of biology. His scientific work has appeared in American Naturalist, Newsweek, Evolution, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Biological Theory, Agriculture and Human Values, Biology & Philosophy. Steven also co-edited a volume on environmental stewardship. His creative works include a novel, The Gift of the King's Jeweler (2003 Covenant Communications). His poetry has appeared in Dialogue, Bellowing Ark, Irreantum, Red Rock Review and other magazines. Peck was nominated for the 2011 Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. Other awards include the Meyhew Short Story Contest, First Place at Warp and Weave, Honorable Mention in the 2011 Brookie and D.K. Brown Fiction Contest, and Second Place in the Eugene England Memorial Essay Contest.
Montaigne Medal Finalist
“Steven Peck has imagined a world ever-so-slightly tweaked from this real one…The Scholar of Moab explores the otherworld of nature, imagination, and mind.” —BROOKE WILLIAMS, author of Halflives
What happens when a two-headed cowboy, a high school dropout, and a poet abducted by aliens come together in 1970s Moab, Utah? The Scholar of Moab, a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the hoary La Sal Mountains.
Young Hyrum Thayne, an unrefined geological surveyor, steals a massive dictionary out of the Grand County library in a midnight raid, startling the good people of Moab into believing a nefarious band of Book of Mormon thugs, the Gadianton Robbers, has arisen again. To make matters worse, Hyrum's illicit affair with Dora Tanner, a local poet thought to be mad, results in the delivery of a bouncing baby boy who vanishes the night of his birth. Righteous Moabites accuse Dora of the murder, but who really killed their child? Did a coyote dingo the baby? Was it an alien abduction as Dora claims? Was it Hyrum? Or could it have been the only witness to the crime, one of a pair of Oxford-educated conjoined twins who cowboy in the La Sals on sabbatical?
STEVEN L. PECK knows Moab, inside out. An evolutionary ecologist at Brigham Young University, Peck teaches the philosophy of biology. His scientific work has appeared in American Naturalist, Newsweek, Evolution, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Biological Theory, Agriculture and Human Values, Biology & Philosophy. Steven also co-edited a volume on environmental stewardship. His creative works include a novel, The Gift of the King's Jeweler (2003 Covenant Communications). His poetry has appeared in Dialogue, Bellowing Ark, Irreantum, Red Rock Review and other magazines. Peck was nominated for the 2011 Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. Other awards include the Meyhew Short Story Contest, First Place at Warp and Weave, Honorable Mention in the 2011 Brookie and D.K. Brown Fiction Contest, and Second Place in the Eugene England Memorial Essay Contest.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Scholar of Moab Reviews
3.5
“yeah so I hated this! Why did this man feel the need to use the n word in this day and age? There was no need! he then came to my class I had to read this for and I realized extra why I didn’t like this book”
“Steven Peck is one of Mormonism's greatest living writers and this book is a wonderful, weird, wild Mormon delight. I love the narrative structure of various manuscript pieces cobbled together and how the story is revealed piecemeal through that structure (and some things are simply left up to the reader to determine!). Peck's love of Moab and that southern Utah desert is on full display and seeps through the pages. Glad to have finally read this one. I dig it.”
About Steven L. Peck
Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary ecologist at Brigham Young University where he teaches the philosophy of biology. His scientific work has appeared in numerous publications. Steve has won a fistful of awards for both his poetry and science fiction work.
Other books by Steven L. Peck
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