Author T.I.M. Wirkus will read from and sign copies of their new novel at a Sandy library event on Saturday, Nov. 7.
The book, A Bad Deal in Mormon Land, is a gothic tale set in 1908 Salt Lake City. According to the event listing on Sandy Journal, the story follows a spirit medium hired to summon the ghost of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.
Wirkus grew up in the Salt Lake area and studied at Brigham Young University before earning a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California, according to a profile by publisher Type Eighteen Books. The novel is their third, following City of Brick and Shadow (2014), a Shamus Award finalist, and The Infinite Future (2018).
The plot centers on Madame Ilsa von Hoffmann, an itinerant spirit medium at the end of her professional rope. She takes a job from Roger Marsh, an excommunicated polygamist who wants her to summon Joseph Smith's ghost to bless his breakaway religious sect. The cast includes a journalist profiling Mormon women, a copper magnate, Marsh's rogue third wife and a vengeful private investigator from Ilsa's past.
Wirkus told SLUG Magazine the novel blends queer and historical fiction with humor. Much of their inspiration for approaching Salt Lake City's past through a queer lens came from Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam, according to the SLUG profile. Wirkus said they were drawn to the history of vaudeville theater and gender-bending performance art that swept America from the late 1800s to the early 1930s.
In a separate piece for the Association for Mormon Letters, Wirkus wrote that disappointment drives the characters. The novel follows "a cast of characters whose lives have not ended up how they've hoped," Wirkus wrote, including "a fraudulent spirit medium whose career has been in steep decline for years" and "a former LDS apostle, excommunicated for sticking with the practice of polygamy even after the Church renounced it."
Wirkus credited an English teacher at Brighton High School named Pat Russell with shaping their love of writing. "She took her students seriously as writers," Wirkus told SLUG Magazine, "and I think that was really valuable."
Foreword Reviews called the book "a carnivalesque novel about a charlatan medium's adventures," noting that historical references to polygamy, the Industrial Workers of the World and turn-of-the-century séances fold into the action.
The Sandy branch of The County Library is at 10100 S Petunia Way. The branch can be reached at 801-943-4636 for event details, including start time.
