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2011 Best Novel, Association for Mormon letters
2011 Finalist, Montaigne Medal, Eric Hoffer Awards
What happens when a two-headed cowboy, a high school dropout, and a poet abducted by aliens come together in 1970’s Moab, Utah? The Scholar of Moab, a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the hoary La Sal Mountains.
Young Hyrum Thayne, an unrefined geological surveyor, steals a massive dictionary out of the Grand County library in a midnight raid, startling the good people of Moab into believing a nefarious band of Book of Mormon thugs, the Gadianton Robbers, has arisen again. To make matters worse, Hyrum’s illicit affair with Dora Tanner, a local poet thought to be mad, results in the delivery of a bouncing baby boy who vanishes the night of his birth. Righteous Moabites accuse Dora of the murder, but who really killed their child? Did a coyote dingo the baby? Was it an alien abduction as Dora claims? Was it Hyrum? Or could it have been the only witness to the crime, one of a pair of Oxford-educated conjoined twins who cowboy in the La Sals on sabbatical?
Take a blazing ride with Hyrum LeRoy Thayne, the Lord’s Chosen Servant and Defender of Moab. His short rich life spans the borderlands of magical realism where geology, ecology philosophy, and consciousness collide, in Steven L. Peck’s rip-snorting tale The Scholar of Moab.
Steven L. Peck knows Moab, inside out. An evolutionary ecologist at Brigham Young University, Peck teaches the philosophy of biology. His scientific work has appeared in American Naturalist, Newsweek, Evolution, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Biological Theory, Agriculture and Human Values, Biology & Philosophy. Steven also co-edited a volume on environmental stewardship. His creative works include a novel, The Gift of the King's Jeweler (2003 Covenant Communications). His poetry has appeared in Dialogue, Bellowing Ark, Irreantum, Red Rock Review and other magazines. Peck was nominated for the 2011 Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award. Other awards include the Meyhew Short Story Contest, First Place at Warp and Weave, Honorable Mention in the 2011 Brookie and D.K. Brown Fiction Contest, and Second Place in the Eugene England Memorial Essay Contest.
“Steven Peck has imagined a world ever-so-slightly tweaked from this real one, but—well, why wouldn’t conjoined twins have an independent consciousness, bumblebees be more dependent on faith than wings, and Einstein sing German nursery rhymes? The Scholar of Moab explores the otherworld of nature, imagination, and mind.” —Brooke Williams, Halflives: Reconciling Work and Wildness
"It’s satire of the best sort: biting what it loves, snuggling up to what it hates." —Scott Abbott, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Director of Integrated Studies, Utah Valley University
"Peck moves easily from the lyrical to the grotesque, and sets his multi-voiced tale in the ideal place: Moab, Utah—where red rocks and surprising arches provide the ideal backdrop for anything in or out of the world, including space ships and kidnapped babies." —Margaret Blair Young, President: Association for Mormon Letters
"Peck convincingly merges the genre of magical realism with American West fiction by invoking the power of personal testimony—not his own, but by presenting the recorded testimony of his characters in letters, journals, poetry, and interview transcripts. Using these disparate voices, Peck concocts a strange and tragicomic brew of naivety, philosophy, faith, discovery, and loss."
—Blair Dee Hodges, Standing on the Promises, The Association for Mormon Letters
ErinSharp
Posted April 10, 2012
I can guarantee that The Scholar of Moab is unlike any other book you’ve read before. Satiric, witty, sincere, supernatural, philosophical, religious, and scientific, The Scholar of Moab is a unique concoction that makes for a wonderfully absurd, thought provoking, and beautiful read. The story revolves around the life of Hyrum Thane, a high school drop out with scholarly ambitions. Snippets of his life are reconstructed by the redactor from Hyrum’s journal and the writings of those who knew Hyrum, such as a poetess named Dora Tanner and the conjoined Babcock twins who used to cowboy in Moab. Due to the distinctive construction of the novel, reading through it is like peeling away layers of an onion as you try to disambiguate what happened to Hyrum as more information is revealed. Perhaps the most impressive feat of this book is the literary ventriloquism, as I like to call it. Peck successfully creates unique and instantly recognizable voices for each character that not only tell the story, but also subtly define the inner workings of each character. Peck has an impressive literary “range,” switching easily between Hyrum’s journal, full of grammatical mistakes and a comically misplaced vocabulary, Dora’s eloquent and highly figurative poetry, and the Babcock twins’ scientific abstract on consciousness. The diversity of voices that contribute to the novel make the characters more compelling and adds a level of complexity to the tale that mirrors real life. The Scholar Moab is well worth your time and I highly recommend that you pick up the book and explore Moab with this unique and compelling cast of characters who will make you laugh, ponder, and perhaps learn a little about yourself.
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Posted December 16, 2012
If you’re looking for a book full of conundrums, you’ll find in The Scholar of Moab by Steven L Peck. Through “letters” and “diaries” and conversations with the characters, Peck creates the world of Hyrum Thayne and his circle of friends. The setting is Moab, Utah, a beautiful part of the world if you haven’t been there and a bit of a town of revolution if you have.
Hyrum isn’t a scholar buy any means but sure would like to be. If we read his diaries that is the one thing that shines thorugh – Hyrum is working hard at scholarly things. He “borrows” books form the local library. Oh, he does bring them back – eventually. But since they leave under his coat most of the time they aren’t really missed.
Then there is Dora Daphne Tanner, possibly Hyrum’s lover (which would make him the father of her baby – which she lost in the brush {maybe}). His friends the conjoined Babcock twins witnessed the birth and rode looking for the mother and child when Dora took off. The twins are scholars in their own right and the letters they send the “Redactor” of the tale are quite interesting. The thought of them riding the range is as well.
This is one odd story but it catches you up in 1970’s Moab and you want to give it up once on a while but you can’t because – well, because you HAVE to know the end.
Overview
2011 Best Novel, Association for Mormon letters
2011 Finalist, Montaigne Medal, Eric Hoffer Awards
What happens when a two-headed cowboy, a high school dropout, and a poet abducted by aliens come together in 1970’s Moab, Utah? The Scholar of Moab, a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the hoary La Sal Mountains.
Young Hyrum Thayne, an unrefined geological surveyor, ...