Reading Room
Recent publications by members of the University of Utah community
Sheryle Bauer, an office assistant in the College of Social Work and a first-time author, has published The Devil in the Deal (Elektra Press, July 2017). She began working on her book in 1996.
The contemporary crime novel, based on a true story, has all the allure and glitter you’d never expect to find in real life. It’s the story of an exotic dancer who marries into a family that is even crazier than her own. During an informal meeting, her father-in-law announces his plans to start a family-based marketing company and, with Sheryle’s business acumen, quickly turns it into a multi-milliondollar firm. But doing so is not without its consequences. Carl is a seasoned swindler with a crooked past. His indiscretions create a family dilemma when his past catches up with their future. It’s either sink or swim for a family that has been held hostage for years by one man’s unscrupulous history. In the end, Bauer’s upside-down abusive childhood provides the ticket to surviving drugs, alcoholism, fraud, kidnapping, child abuse, rape, infidelity, and murder.
The theme of the book is overcoming serious problems, bad choices, and learned helplessness. There’s another lesson too, about having a dream and never giving up. Bauer says there was a force driving her to keep going. “I took every writing class there is through Continuing Ed., and the critiques of my fellow students really helped me,” she says. “I finally found my voice.”
Brandon R. Peterson, an assistant professor (lecturer) of religious studies in the College of Humanities, has published Being Salvation: Atonement and Soteriology in the Theology of Karl Rahner (Fortress Press, June 2017).
Being Salvation unfolds the place of Jesus within the thought of Karl Rahner, one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the last hundred years. Rahner’s account of how Jesus saves or redeems human beings has been criticized by other theologians as amounting to a mere notification to the world about God’s desire for reconciliation. Indeed, some have doubted whether Rahner’s Jesus can be said to cause salvation at all. Peterson responds by demonstrating that for Rahner, Jesus isn’t simply a do-er of salvation, a redemptive agent who accomplishes human salvation simply through a heroic act; rather, he reconciles human beings with God even more fundamentally through who he is—the one who, as fully God and fully human, represents and unites Creator and creature to one another. In Rahner’s mind, Jesus not only opens heaven’s gates, but he in fact creates heaven in himself with his own resurrection.
In uncovering this dimension within Rahner’s theology, Peterson relates it to other historical examples of representative soteriology (e.g. the ancient theory of recapitulation found in St. Irenaeus of Lyons and other early Christian writers), demonstrating Rahner’s intimate engagement with these historical figures. Perhaps the most important contribution of Being Salvation is uncovering this oft-ignored side of the Rahner, who is renowned for his engagement with twentieth-century philosophy but usually not associated with scholarship on early Christianity. To this end, Peterson gives special attention to Rahner’s intense work on the church fathers early in his career, including Rahner’s untranslated theology dissertation, E latere Christi (“From the Side of Christ”).
The Honorable Ted Stewart JD’75 has published Supreme Power: 7 Pivotal Supreme Court Decisions That Had a Major Impact on America (Shadow Mountain Press, September 2017).
In the book, Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions into the future. Today’s court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage. The book reveals the complex history of the court as told through seven pivotal decisions. These cases originally seemed narrow in scope, but they vastly expanded the interpretation of law. Such is the power of judicial review to make sweeping, often unforeseen, changes in American society by revising the meaning of our Constitution.
Each chapter presents a simple brief on the case and explains what the decisions mean and how the court ruling, often a 5-4 split, had long-term impact. For example, in Lochner v. New York, a widely accepted turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York State law limited excessive overtime for bakery workers. That law was overturned by the court based on the due process clause of the Constitution. The very same precedents, Stewart points out, were used by the court 70 years later and expanded to a new right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, making abortion legal in the nation.
Filled with insight, commentary, and compelling stories of ordinary citizens coming to the judiciary for remedy for the problems of their day, Supreme Power illustrates the magnitude of the court’s power to interpret the Constitution and decide the law of the land.
Stewart was appointed as a United States District Court Judge in 1999 by President Bill Clinton. Prior to that, he served as chief of staff to Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt, executive director of the State Department of Natural Resources, a member and chairman of the Public Service Commission, and chief of staff to Congressman Jim Hansen. He has been a visiting professor at two state universities, teaching courses in law and public policy, and is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Miracle of Freedom: 7 Tipping Points That Saved the World.
Wendy Terrien BS’91 has published two new young adult (YA) books, League of Governors: Chronicle Two—Jason in the Adventures of Jason Lex and The Clan Calling: Chronicle Two—Sadie in the Adventures of Jason Lex (both by Camashea Press, August 2017).
League of Governors picks up with Jason Lex after he has saved the world. Now he’s immersed in training as a new Rampart Guard to protect the shield that enables humans and cryptids like Skyfish, Bigfoot, and the Black Shuck to live side by side and danger-free. A summons from the League of Governors, the clandestine organization that presides over the human-cryptid treaty, takes a suspicious turn when Jason’s dad and sister disappear on their way to League headquarters. Jason must find them before things go bad, so he follows their trail to London where he discovers the League of Governors may not be the benevolent organization everyone believes.
According to The Colorado Book Review, “From cover to cover, Wendy Terrien’s The League of Governors is a thoroughly entertaining, satisfying read… and for those [for] whom this is your first Wendy Terrien novel, it will likely not be your last.”
In The Clan Calling, Sadie Callahan’s life is as normal as it can be after helping her friend, Jason Lex, save the world, and learning that cryptids such as Skyfish and Bigfoot are real. Things go bad when Sadie comes home after school and finds a strange man with his hands on her grandmother’s neck. Trained in Tae Kwon Do, Sadie strikes and forces the man from their house. Soon after the clash, people around her start behaving oddly. Is she somehow triggering their weird behavior?
The book has been described by Foreword Clarion Reviews as “an eerie urban fantasy novel driven by character relationships and a desperate desire for answers… a unique world and a chilling underlying mystery.”
Terrien has been named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ 2017 Independent Writer of the Year. Her debut novel, The Rampart Guards (February 2016), earned a Kirkus starred review and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2016. In addition to her novels, Terrien has published several short stories with Wicked Ink Books. She received her bachelor’s degree in speech communication from the University of Utah and completed her MBA at the University of Denver. She is a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Pikes Peak Writers, and in 2014 was a finalist in the San Francisco Writer’s Contest. Terrien lives in the Denver area with her husband and their three dogs.
To submit books for consideration, email ann.floor@utah.edu.