Mormon Stories - Lds

Ryan McIlvain was born in Utah and raised in Massachusetts. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review. A graduate of the Rutgers MFA Program and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, he currently lives with his wife in Los Angeles. As part of Mormon Stories Book Club, today Heather Olson Beal and I discuss Ryan’s book "Elders," which is the story of two young Mormon missionaries in Brazil and their tense, peculiar friendship. Elder McLeod - outspoken, surly, a brash American - is nearing the end of his mission. For nearly two years he has spent his days studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon, knocking on doors, teaching missionary lessons "experimenting on the word." His new partner is Elder Passos, a devout, ambitious Brazilian who found salvation and solace in the church after his mother’s early death. The two men are at first suspicious of each other, and their work together is frustrating, fruitless. That changes when a beautiful woman and her