Nicole Markotic’s second novel tells the story of a young woman trying to understand how the devout Mormon girl she once was could have developed into the woman she is now (“lapsed” hardly begins to describe it).

The narrator hails from a quirky family: an atheist German mother who survived the war, an agnostic Croatian father who measures his declining health by his driving skills, and older sisters who don’t seem to inhabit the same world as their sibling. In adulthood, these figures give way to eccentric friends, including a wheelchair-bound artist/corporate spy. But the narrator’s own Mormon childhood forms the most compelling part of this novel.

In a rambling, free-associative way, the narrator depicts her childhood friendship with Vera, a Mormon girl, which results in her own developing obsession with living a good Mormon life. Not having been born into the faith, she works harder at this than even the ultra-pious Vera, who “knew which rules bent and which ones broke.”

But the friendship fades, and a romantic relationship with a lapsed Mormon proves cold and sad. Her boyfriend returns to his faith, and her own adulthood takes on the mantle of recovery from her flirtation with Mormonism, rather than a dispassionate attempt to understand it.

Despite a few jarring changes in direction when other characters take over the narrative, the story is a pleasure to read. It reminds us that we can never become something we aren’t, but neither can we entirely escape the self we have tried to become.