Reading and Signing for Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West

Ken Sanders Rare Books is pleased to announce a reading and signing for the latest volume in the Kingdom in the West series, Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West. The event will feature the book’s editors, distinguished historians Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, and Will Bagley at 7pm on Thursday, February 16th at our downtown Salt Lake City bookstore, 268 South 200 East. Copies of Playing with Shadows (hardcover, $45) will be available for purchase and signing at the event. This event is free and open to the public.

Playing with Shadows was published by The Arthur H. Clark Company in December 2011 as the thirteenth volume in the award-winning Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier series. This volume focuses on “voices of dissent in the Mormon west,” and weaves the personal narratives of four individuals who questioned their Mormon faith into a compelling story that examines the roots of Mormonism by offering four different stories of dissent. Playing with Shadows also includes documentation in the form of newspaper articles, personal letters, journals, and sermons to contextualize the stories. From the publisher: “An antidote to anti-Mormon sensationalism, these detailed chronicles of deeply personal journeys add subtlety and a human dimension to our understanding of the Mormon past.” Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, and Will Bagley are the editors of Playing with Shadows.

Polly Aird is an author and historian who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with Distinction in History. While researching the lives of her Scottish great-grandparents, she learned they had been early LDS converts who left the faith. Polly has written award-winning articles for all the leading Mormon history journals and the Utah and Nevada historical quarterlies. Her book, Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West (2009), won the Best Biography Award from the Mormon History Association and was a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award.

Jeff Nichols served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, earned his P.h.D. in History at the University of Utah, and now teaches Environmental History, Latin American History, Vietnam and America, and American Women’s History at Westminster College. His Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918 won the Mormon History Association’s Best First Book Award. Jeff has appeared in several Westminster Players productions and produced and directed an outdoor student production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Snowbird Resort.

Will Bagley is series editor of the Arthur H. Clark Company’s documentary history, KINGDOM IN THE WEST: The Mormons and the American Frontier. He has written more than twenty books on overland emigration, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and the Mormons, and won best books awards from almost everybody. Will’s other recent books are So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Oregon and California Trails, 1812–1848, the first of four volumes of “Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails,” and The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857–1858, with David L. Bigler.

For more information, please contact:

Ken Sanders Rare Books

268 South 200 East Salt Lake City, UT 84111

801-521-3819

books@dreamgarden.com