Date of Graduation
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
English
Advisor/Mentor
Hurt, Bryan
Committee Member
Viswanathan, Padma
Second Committee Member
Jensen, Toni
Keywords
Fiction; Latter-day Saint; Mormon; Short Story; Surreal
Abstract
Up and Away: Stories and a Novella is a semi-linked collection of stories that deals primarily with people living and existing on the fringes of Mormonism as their individual identities and beliefs rub up against the collectively accepted attitudes and beliefs of mainstream members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many of the stories take place in and around Southern Utah while some find their setting in places are distant as Fiji and the Philippines. Many of the characters presented in this collection are confronted with doubt surrounding their place within their faith community. They grapple with serious questions of faith, gender identity, the deterioration of parent-child and sibling relationships, and even the intersection of all three. As they face these very emotionally and spiritually fraught situations, oftentimes the line between reality and unreality blurs when their doubts, fears, concerns, and hopes are quite literally manifested in awesome, terrifying, and even emotionally touching visions. These visions take symbolic and terrifying form, often revealing the protagonists’ deepest fears like in “Good Egg, Bad Egg” and “Behold the Man.” These visions also become moments of relief and reprieve in stories like “Deseret”, “Valley of Dry Bones”, and “Bethesda.” The collection culminates in the story “Up and Away,” which addresses many of the themes and ideas touched on in other stories in the collection including regret, the weight of institutional and parental expectation, personal loss, memory, and reconciliation with others and with the self. One of the primary aims of Up and Away: Stories and a Novella is to interrogate the intersection of the sacred and the surreal in order to, hopefully, shed light on the internal and external experiences of Millennial and Gen-Z Latter-day Saints—and others of other faiths—who are dealing with their own complicated and controversial faith traditions, as they continue to find ways to exist and even thrive along the fringes of conservative faith communities.
Citation
Einfeldt, J. M. (2026). Up and Away: Stories and a Novella. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/6139
