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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 91-104_UHQ BReviews/pp.271-296 12/5/12 9:50 AM Page 100 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Peterson adds, “It was hard to stay mad at the fellow” (204). Peterson portrays himself as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yet his liberal temperament sometimes placed him at odds with certain LDS church teachings. He writes sensitively of his disagreement with his church’s withholding of its priesthood from black men of African descent, and of the pleading letter he and others sent to LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball urging the lifting of such restriction less than a month before the policy was officially reversed in mid-1978. (Peterson does not in the least claim credit for the change, though the coincidence of the timing of his letter and the change in policy is intriguing.) Of his church’s current opposition to same-sex marriage, Peterson’s dissent is equally thoughtful: “Reason and tolerance lie at the heart of the gay issue for me. I ache with the pain the debate causes individuals and families, especially as a result of the strong stand against homosexual marriage the LDS Church took on a recent gay-marriage initiative in California [i.e., the Proposition 8 controversy]. I believe the church will wrestle with that problem for the next decade while moving to include more ‘in the tent,’ much as it did with the issue of granting the priesthood to people of black heritage” (269). Peterson concludes his autobiography with a poetic meditation on solitude and loss as well as a paean to friends, family, and especially his wife. “To hide from loneliness,” he writes, “is to hide from love and family and humanity, for loneliness defines my blessings” (286). “I can’t wait to be Chase boy again,” he then closes, “be fed from a scraped apple and pass it on to Charlie [a grandson who died at age one]. That is the loneliness of gratitude ... and the glory down to the final mortal moments graced with family, Mahler, and Mozart” (286; ellipsis in original). All memoirs should be so eloquent, so moving, so humane. GARY JAMES BERGERA Salt Lake City Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building 1882-1945. By Eric Walz. (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 2012. xvii + 236 pp. Cloth, $50.00) NIKKEI IN THE INTERIOR WEST documents the immigration and settlement of Japanese Americans in the interior states of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebraska. The author, who grew up in southeastern Idaho, had spent his early years on a farm surrounded by immigrant farmers and neighbors. An interest 100 |
