A memoir about the path the author took—sometimes unwittingly—out of her Mormon upbringing and through a thicket of profound difficulties to become a writer.
The Latter Days is clean, strong and deep, a raging river of a story that its author carried until she couldn’t hold it back. It is an arrow straight from Mormon country, from the Mountain West and from the heart.
[A] tender, unspectacular coming-of-age memoir ... Snippets of Mormon history, beliefs and rituals supply the story with a colorful backdrop ... It takes a while for The Latter Days to build up emotional steam. Mostly it flows slowly, a gentle stream of recollections, sometimes coalescing into eloquence.
Freeman’s transformation from obedient Utah girl to urbane Los Angeles artist remains somewhat opaque, in that she doesn’t identify a moment when she knew she did not believe in God or did not want her life to be defined by her Mormon identity. Her exploration of the self is more subtle, more honest ... In 'Home,' the book’s last section, Freeman drives across Utah to have breakfast in a diner with John Thorn, her first husband and the father of her son...It’s a somewhat jarring switch of tone — echoing the distanced style she uses when she writes about Mormon history, but more noticeable here, because she is describing her life.
