Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin: A Memoir
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