Set against the backdrop of southern Utah's canyon country, the novel's protagonist manifests exuberance and innocence constrained only by strict moral education. The sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic posturing required of Frank in concealing his humanity behind a mask of feigned righteousness makes for comic, painful, and moving scenarios.
For instance, Frank punishes himself for lapses of self-denial by fasting during long hot days on the ranch. He ties his hands to the bedpost and raps his knuckles with a vegetable grater. When he thinks his eyes have been opened to good and evil, even wholesome pursuits take on sinister undertones: romancing his girlfriend, Marianne, becomes an opportunistic façade for sensual indulgence; hard work and business acumen become the tools of avarice; and the Christian gospel becomes the cruel master of repression. His attempt to exorcise this hypocrisy from his life—and the confusion about how to sincerely atone for it—results in an epiphany that restores perspective to his life—a cleansing moment of such power that readers will themselves feel that they have experienced it.
