Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin: A Memoir - Hardcover

Hardy, Nicole

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401341861 ISBN 13: 9781401341862

Publisher: Hyperion, 2013

Synopsis

When Nicole Hardy's eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy's essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast.

Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of thirty-five, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nicole had held absolute conviction in her Mormon faith during her childhood and throughout her twenties. But as she aged out of the Church's "singles ward" and entered her thirties, she struggled to merge the life she envisioned for herself with the one the Church prescribed, wherein all women are called to be mothers and the role of homemaker is the emphatic ideal.

Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin chronicles the extraordinary lengths Nicole went to in an attempt to reconcile her human needs with her spiritual life--flying across the country for dates with LDS men, taking up salsa dancing as a source for physical contact, even moving to Grand Cayman, where the ocean and scuba diving provided some solace. But neither secular pursuits nor LDS guidance could help Nicole prepare for the dilemma she would eventually face: a crisis of faith that caused her to question everything she'd grown up believing.

In the tradition of the memoirs Devotion and Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin is a mesmerizing and wholly relatable account of one woman's hard-won mission to find love, acceptance, and happiness--on her own terms.

About this title

About the Author

Nicole Hardy is a poet and essayist who lives in Seattle and works as a waitress and teacher. She is the author of two poetry collections published by Main Street Rag: Mud Flap Girl's XX Guide to Facial Profiling, which was a finalist in MSR's 2006 chapbook contest, and This Blonde, a full-length collection published in 2009. She earned her MFA at the Bennington College Writing Seminars, and was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize.

From Booklist

What is it like to be a devout Mormon woman in today’s world? Poet and essayist Hardy first opined on the matter in her New York Times Magazine column, “Modern Love,” in which she laid bare her personal struggles to be true to both her heart and her faith. In this achingly candid memoir, Hardy delves more deeply into the dilemmas faced as she aged out of the church’s “single ward” and into her thirties. At a time when her mind should have been on the Mormon tenets of marriage and motherhood, Hardy found herself more interested in writing. (Reading Refuge by Mormon writer Terry Tempest Williams had proved a pivotal moment in life. A Mormon woman, writing? “I didn’t know such a thing existed,” Hardy writes. “Could exist.”) Falling in love with a Catholic man vexed Hardy further. Could she make it work with a partner who didn’t share the views that had guided her throughout her life? Although her account occasionally gets bogged down in too much detail, Hardy’s confessional tone is engaging, and her story is moving. --Allison Block

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1401341861
• ISBN 13: 9781401341862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304