Temples made of sugar cubes, rag rugs out of old BYU T-shirts, & skirts of out of careworn missionary ties—that was the crafty Mormon life.

Caitlin worked on a tote made of gum wrappers for a contest she’d seen in Tween magazine, enlisting all her friends as chewers.

According to Leann, women were the homemakers because her dad didn’t see the value in anything he couldn’t eat, drink, wear, or watch.

Leann had a different flavor of the month when it came to the elders, though Kath would joke that they were all just different kinds of vanilla.

Elder Roberts had had a promise in me, yet he had given me up, giving me away to another man to take to wife.

The Sweeneys were pizza & paper plates; we were haute cuisine on china. The more time I spent away from my family, the less like them I became.

The angel Moroni—a prophet who hadn’t made it to the highest level of heaven—stood with his bugle atop every temple, issuing a clarion call to the worthy masses.

Leann was like a grown-up version of Caitlin, even as I saw in my mother, what I feared I would become.