Where Nothing is Long Ago: Memories of a Mormon Childhood by Virginia Sorensen

 genre: memoir/short story

Virginia Soresnsen spent her childhood in small Mormon towns, as tight-knit as they were isolated during the years before and following World War I.  These essays/short stories are based around memories from this time and place - and she admits that while they are not non-fiction, they are all based on real experiences.

They are lovely, truly taking me back to a world that doesn't exist anymore.  Her style is sharp and inquisitive and each story is told through her childish eyes.  We learn about things along with her, piece together adult conversations and see truth within a greater context.  Having a Mormon Childhood of my own, there is a lot of culture and history that resonate so deeply within my own life - and yet when she was a young teenager, original pioneers still lived in her town.  Our church's history was still fresh and raw and, in some ways, exciting.  Especially, I loved to delve into nuances of Danish converts, the story about a former polygamist's wife, and her first interactions with a Black person.  She captures the joy, the yearning, the heartbreak and the innocence (and its loss) of childhood and young adulthood so well.

The subject isn't for anyone and might perhaps make some readers uncomfortable as she speaks openly about some things often considered too sacred to really talk about, but again, it's all through the eyes of a child and it never felt disrespectful to me.  I also had to remind myself that she was also writing these memories in the 1960s - and that only recently have people realized that unless you're a Native American yourself, dressing up in feathers and pretending to be an "Indian" is inappropriate - in Virginia's childhood town, it was absolutely a piece of their communal storytelling.  

I do love storytelling and the memoir-style narratives told from a woman's perspective are my favorite.  I love to just imagine living in another time where so much was different and yet so very much the same.