Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Steven L. Peck is professor of Biology at Brigham Young University. He has published widely in academic journals, and has previously published two novels, a short story collection and a collection of speculative poetry. Peck lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah, USA.

Beautifully bizarre! I could not have taken this dizzying journey except for a master hand leading me through the surprising giggles into the even more surprising blessings of grace, wisdom and healing. I really don't think Gilda is fiction, for I fell in love with her, and as she and I both know, love is stunningly real.--Carol Lynn Pearson, author of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men You are one of the lucky few to be living on this very planet at a time when a physical copy of Gilda Trillim's wit and wisdom can be placed into your waiting hands. I envy the roller coaster of colorful images and wrenching emotions your mind is about to enjoy as you uncover Gilda's spunk and spontaneity as a one-handed naturalist who writes creatively, paints particularly, and has a wicked badminton return. Come with her as she susses out the meaning of love through engaging with potheads and fishheads and attempt to understand her wide-reaching philosophical musings that stretch across the cosmos and then constrict into the core of an appleseed. Even though you are not a rat (unless you are and then congratulations for getting your paws upon this scripture!) you will find much to learn about the universe and finding one's place within it. By willing the one-handed, full-hearted, and perhaps-insane Gilda Trillim into existence, Steven Peck again captures the wonder and failings of being human and the mystical connections between the natural and religious world that make life so delightfully complicated.--Emily W Jensen, writer, blogger, and editor of A Book of Mormons What a mad, marvelous, and compulsively fascinating heroine Steven Peck has created in this novel - a woman who can spend a year painting pictures of an apple seed and write a novel describing the contents of a single drawer. By carefully scrutinizing these microcosmos of everyday life, Gilda Trillim (but really Steven Peck) starts to answer some of the biggest questions of all, like "Where did God come from?," "How do complex patterns emerge from random chaos?," and "Why does anything even exist at all?--Michael Austin, author of Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature