A review by glitterandtwang
Godforsaken Idaho by Shawn Vestal

4.0

I picked this up a year or two ago solely because of the title (and because I was visiting Idaho at the time). I was pleasantly surprised by the short stories in this book -- if you've ever wanted to know what it feels like to grow up in Idaho, these stories do a good job of evoking the strange sadness and occasional beauty of it. Vestal was raised LDS, and this fact permeates several of the stories -- who among us, living in Idaho, hasn't briefly fantasized about handily dispatching a persistent missionary?

Vestal's prose is spare and evocative both, a rare and admirable feat. I'll probably read this again down the line, and that's not something I do often.