At twenty-two, Judith Freeman--born and raised in a Mormon community--had abandoned her faith, but found herself working in the church-owned department store in the Utah town where she grew up. She was in the process of divorcing the man she'd married at age seventeen and was living in her parents' house with her four-year-old son, who had already endured two heart surgeries. The surgeon, a rising star in his field, had become her lover. It was at this fraught moment that she decided to become a writer.

In this moving memoir, Freeman explores the circumstances and choices that informed...