This extraordinary poetry collection opens with the author as a little girl delighted with the jewelry being sold by a vendor along the beach, unaware that the bowtied rabbit earrings symbolize the Playboy empire.

In navigating her life as a free-spirited Mormon, each of Earley’s poems expresses the tension she feels in adhering to and expanding the confines of her faith. From awkward first kisses shared on a church couch to refusing to talk to men who are not Mormon “lest I fall from grace, on my ass,” her poems remain funny, wry, thoughtful. Despite the promise not to talk to non-Mormon men, her final poems detail her marriage to a Catholic husband who offers Hail Mary prayers after a lost pregnancy while she struggles to find comfort from an elusive Mother in Heaven. Despite their differences and moments of heartache, they thrive, allowing themselves to “imagine we’re floating in bright bubbles of light.” It is an emotional roadmap for anyone else facing such tensions, joys, and accommodations.

Taggart is annoyed at having to navigate the political structure of the bureaucracy, but he cannot bring himself to leave. He is able to teach, and he likes his proximity to Church archives, local bookstores, and the woman who, according to fate, is still seeing the policeman from The Angel Acronym. All the major characters are back, and Taggart’s romantic rival is given the new murder case, meaning that he has to rely once again on Taggart for his knowledge of the Church’s secrets. This gives both men a reason to keep an eye on the other, making for entertaining situations in a funny, insider send-up of the RLDS community.

 “What I’m talking about is knowledge. Knowledge is lived, not forgiven. … It’s an old Druid idea but an interesting one. Knowledge can’t be forgiven. We can be forgiven for our deeds, maybe for our thoughts. But once you know something, there’s no forgiveness because there’s no unknowing.” —Toom Taggart

Finding the church archivist dead in the temple complex was somewhat awkward for the RLDS church hierarchy. What was the archivist doing in the temple in the middle of the night and what was he doing with President Fred M. Smith’s declaration of supreme directional control?

For the public relations department, this was all a day’s work—something not so very difficult to explain away with a few carefully worded phrases. That would have been that, had the director of church education, erstwhile philosopher Toom Taggart, not smelled something rotten on the second floor.

Alternately suspenseful and humorous, The Angel Acronym romps through the corridors of religious orthodoxy and the pages of history to probe the perplexities of religious truth, public image, and a bureaucratic mindset.