Before Us Like a Land of Dreams

"This masterwork flouts expectations."

—FOREWORD REVIEWS, starred review

"This resonant novel is told in a multitude of voices, forming a family saga that is both a revisionist history of Latter–day Saint settlement in the American West and a personal journey. In powerful prose, Anderson lets a chorus of voices tell their own often surprising, sometimes heartbreaking stories."

—KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Anderson's fictionalized journey through time was prompted by her mother’s declining health, her son’s hospitalization, rampant wildfires plaguing the region, and a beloved country severely divided. A work of universal appeal."

—LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

"…bravely wrestles abandoned and underrepresented histories onto the page… a veritable index of abandoned history, almost like the second telling of what should have been included with the first."

—15 BYTES

"Anderson explores the thorny entanglements of family, religion, and self, asking—with crisp, evocative prose—what portion of our lives do we direct, and what portion rests upon the 'dark hazards' of ancestral preordination?"

—JANA RICHMAN, author of Finding Stillness in a Noisy World and The Ordinary Truth

"Literary and true, this is the hardest—and best—kind of book, taking no prisoners, forgiving nothing, demanding all. Read it to confirm your membership, fierce and fragile, in the great imperfect human race."

—JULIE NICHOLS, author of Pigs When They Straddle the Air

"A magnificent orchestra of voices—piercing and holy, naked and singing, ragged and wistful and queer—but each voice, in turn, fiercely intimate and finely wrought. …a book for readers who refuse to be lulled or placated, who demand more heart, more exploration, more character."

—NATE LIEDERBACH, author of Beasts You’ll Never See

"Voices from the American West as idiosyncratic as the Southern voices that make up Faulkner's As I Lay Dying."

—SCOTT ABBOTT, author of Wild Rides and Wildflowers

"Through language rich in metaphor, that is as rhythmic and melodic as a poem, Anderson reveals to her readers that family is more than genetics, home is more than place, and understanding is always fragmented. Before Us Like a Land of Dreams will find a solid place in the canon of literature of the American West."

—LAURA HAMBLIN, author of The Eyes of a Flounder

"Anderson's keen prose shreds the myths of American history…you will find, in Anderson's vision, a stark and truthful reckoning with white legacies."

—MICHAEL WALSH, author of The Dirt Riddles

"A unique amalgam of fiction, where the threads of Mormonism, Shoshone identity, British settlers, and multiracial origins compel a deep reconsideration of what we think we know about our roots and our history."

—THE UTAH REVIEW