This Is the Place, by Peter Rock

I've been in a mood to read things about Mormons lately, and the pickings are rather slim around here. I went to my local public library and search for any fiction about Mormons, and ended up with this, which seemed extra appealing to me because it was set partially in Wendover, Nevada, and hey! I've been there!

Having been to Wendover, however, was not enough to make this book particularly noteworthy. (Nor, in fact, was this book enough to make Wendover particularly noteworthy.) As the story of an aging casino dealer and his strange obsession with an even stranger Mormon girl (she thinks she sees visions in the desert; she pursues those visions to Las Vegas,) and the disastrous consequences of the strangeness of both characters, This Is the Place falls strangely flat: the characters weren't unique enough to hold my attention for long, and the disastrous consequences were mundane enough, and under-written enough, that I barely even noticed them happening.

The best thing about the book, I thought, at least, was its portrayal of Mormons: Rock, not a Mormon himself, treats them sympathetically but accurately: some are genuinely good people genuinely trying to do good, others are total hypocrites, others are struggling with a wide variety of problems, and all are human. It was refreshing to see a portrayal from an outsider that doesn't treat Mormons and the Mormon church as a monolithic whole.

Not nice enough that I'd recommend this book to anyone, though, alas.