Chisholm's book is subtitled "Footloose in an American Dream." Huh? What "American Dream" is he talking about? His prologue answers the question, and sets the scene for an oddly affecting and thoroughly absorbing travel memoir:

One night in early July 1985, in what seemed the exact middle of no place, I gave up on the American Dream. I was lying with my head out of a small mountain tent, looking up at a scrim of stars, when it drifted away. Forty-nine, I was pressing the edge of a walker's luck, averaging twelve miles a day while seeking an accommodation with American land, its people, its memories, and, especially, its Dreams. Alone on a remote section of Wyoming's Sweetwater River, I'd arrived at a high point in the geography of out-of-touch.

To tell the truth, I hadn't been doing too much American Dreaming. For seventy-two days I'd followed a nineteenth-century emigrant trail from the Missouri River, pondering Dream's possibilities, tracing an exodus that took 143 men and boys, 3 women, and 2 children beyond the boundaries of the United States in search of a homeland. (p. 3)

What on earth is Chisholm up to? He confesses to something of a mid-life crisis, a place where he has no idea where his life is going. He wants to leave family and job behind, hit the road, and find himself. But he has little idea where to start. And then he realizes: why not re-trace the steps of a group of people who also set out looking for identity, for meaning, for freedom?

And thus begins a journey that would take him 1100 miles across country, following in the footsteps of the Mormon pioneers.

Of course, there's one hitch: Chisholm isn't a Mormon. And, in fact, he has little sympathy for the belief system or for the Church itself. His motive isn't to build faith, or to please God, or even to find ultimate religious truth. He simply wants to find himself.

Chisholm interlaces his story with references to the Mormon past, both as documented in the histories, and as encountered along the way. There is frequent divergence of the two as he discovers either ignorance or reluctance on the part of the people he encounters. Perhaps a cigar-smoking, alcohol drinking pilgrim along the Mormon trail causes some cognitive dissonance among the citizens.

A map at the front of the book helps us to keep track of the places he visits and the people he meets. They are a diverse bunch, and Chisholm spares nothing in his attempt to describe his small-town encounters with the cynical eye of a hardened observer. Take the example of his stop at Columbus, Nebraska:

Altogether, I spent thirty-six hours in Columbus, a big farm town with all the charisma of a stripped Ford pickup trying to dress itself up with extra chrome, roll bars, and mag wheels. Commerce and "boosterism" were squandering its fine old town square, feeding a cancer of concrete block shopping malls and commercial strip centers along a four-lane highway on the north side. The four-lane highway -- a bad Dream -- connected a two-lane highway on the east with a two-lane on the west. So far as I could tell, its main connection was from developers to their bank accounts, the resulting architectural travesty what H.L. Mencken called "the American lust for the hideous." (p. 57)

He then ties in events in Mormon history centered in that area. Luminaries from Brigham Young to Ezra Taft Benson populate his discussion of Columbus. Similarly, each stop is look at how things are today, with reference to Mormonism's encounter with that town. This, for me, was a high point in the book, a knitting together of past and present that gives life to the historical narratives.

He follows this pattern from one stop to the next, filling us with rich detail and humorous asides, cynical squints at what he perceives as the disingenuity of the mid-west character, the superficiality of the American experience, and, I stress, his perception that Mormonism fits the pattern. His criticisms are frequently harsh, and he sometimes misses the mark. But his prose is always amusing.

His own particular view of Mormon life and practice is sprinkled throughout. His final arrival in Salt Lake City, and his visit to the Temple, are typical of his barbed observations:

I saved the famous Mormon Temple for next to last, walking around the entire walled city block that encloses it, pacing the final steps around my journey, stopping at last in front of its grand portal. Off limits to Gentiles, it guarded its secrets like a pharaoh's tomb. Out front, a photographer was snapping wedding pictures, two couples having been "sealed" with its walls for "time and eternity," each couple waiting its turn for the shutter to freeze them in yet another Mormon family history. They were beautiful young people, but they seemed to be going Dutch treat. Stepping into eternity with each other, they were no more or less plastic looking than all newlyweds, but an undertone of awful seriousness, like a coat of gray primer, lay behind smiles for the camera.

I wanted to offer a friendly Gentile's advice, tell them everything would turn out all right if only they remembered that marriage is a kind of friendship sanctioned by the police. To Mormon brides I'd offer Kathleen Norris's wisdom: "There are men I could spend eternity with -- but not in this life." For grooms a truism from George Coote: "No woman ever shot her husband while he was doing dishes" -- or taking out the trash, for that matter. Sadly, no video cameras are allowed inside a Mormon temple, so with no reruns, there's no chance for a Mormon husband (or wife) to play the tape backward and watch himself walk out a free man.

But it was all so forever, their leap of faith into marital outer space, everything depending on whether they believed the God of this world lives on a planet called Kolob -- well, not really -- but that Joseph Smith, among billions of sentient beings across the eons, had alone been handed the keys to the Kingdom of God, his way the path, destination assured, providing you didn't take a road less traveled or, mixing metaphors, rock the boat. Then I remembered Red Martin in the Ponderosa Bar in Elk City, Nebraska, saying, "I'll take a green horse any day over a Mormon. You can't break a Mormon." I was glad for the horses. (p. 383)

You get the idea. This is not faith-promoting literature. It isn't even a particularly accurate view of Mormon belief and culture, if such a thing can actually be codified. Instead, it is the story of a gifted writer who sets out to find himself. Losing oneself can be tricky business, you know. And whatever methodology you use to reclaim your identify must be chosen carefully and with a particular end in view. But Chisholm decides to blaze his own trail, following in the footsteps of men whose belief he does not share. And with every step, and every stop, he unleashes his incredibly fertile imagination and talented, although barbed, pen, bringing us along and sucking us in.

Readers of this review will note that I spent more time quoting the book than I generally do. I realized there was no way to convey the spirit of the book any better than direct cites. It seemed the wise path to take.

(Readers should be aware that expletives in this book are definitely not deleted. If you're sensitive to tough language, this book isn't for you.)

"Following the Wrong God Home" is a genuine tour-de-force, a wild ride and a wilder read. I will actually read this one again when I finally catch up with everything else on my reading stack.

Jeff Needle
jeff.needle@general.com