Heresies of Nature
A Novel
Margaret Blair Young
Paperback. 192 Pages. / 1-56085-158-9 / $15.95

The Morgans seem like a typical Utah family. The teenagers act like teenagers and the parents respond like normal parents. Except—Mom has multiple sclerosis.

The family copes with this situation more or less. They treat Mom like the fun-loving person she always was before she had to be confined to a wheelchair and rely on a Morse code-like system of elementary communication.

Inspired by a true story, told as a slice-of-life account of the ups and downs, twists and turns that fill every family's life, Heresies of Nature is alternately subtle and powerful. Only gradually do readers realize how much of this shattering account relates to the unimaginable emotional challenges involved in facing a progressively debilitating, ultimately fatal handicap.

Margaret Blair Young is the author of Elegies and Love Songs, Love Chains, and Salvador; co-author of the trilogy, Standing on the Promises; and a contributor to Bright Angels and Familiars, among other works. She has published in Nexus, The Southern Review, the Western Humanities Review, and more. Her dramatic piece, Dear Stone, was produced to critical local praise at BYU and elsewhere. She has won Best Book and Best Short Story awards from the Association for Mormon Letters, the Dialogue Foundation, the Utah Festival of the Arts, and the Utah Arts Council, and has won or placed in the Pushcart and other national writing competitions. She teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University and lives with her family in Provo.