Way Below the Angels

Why it’s on the list: Craig Harline’s wry, candid mission memoir — the “Pretty Clearly Troubled But Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Life Mormon Missionary” — used by Miller to illustrate emptiness-before-God and by Riess to illustrate mission-culture conformity.

Where I saw it: Flagged #books-to-read while reading Future Mormon by Adam S. Miller. It also surfaces in The Next Mormons, where Jana Riess quotes Harline on how the mission “bad dream” plagued those who couldn’t fit “mission-culture-as-currently-constituted.”

Connections

• Craig Harline — author; BYU historian
• Future Mormon — where Kyle saw it cited
• The Next Mormons — also quotes Harline’s memoir
• Adam S. Miller — cited the “just be yourself” passage