What role does religious symbolism play in The Pictograph Murders?
I think what symbolism comes across depends on what symbolism readers bring to the story. Since The Pictograph Murders seems to sell in a steady trickle in non-LDS bookstores on the tourist circuit here in southeastern Utah, like the local museum gift shop where people visit from all over the world, readers may well find a wider range of symbolic elements in the book than I can anticipate. To my thinking, that’s perfect. My hope is that even readers who distrust religious symbolism will find archetypal appeal in the story’s spiritual elements. When I read your essays/posts on language, I feel your gentle urging for awareness and watchfulness in the use of language. In “The Downstream Principle” your concern is with the rhetoric of those with two different perspectives on the use of a canyon. “But given the weighty importance of what I don’t know about this place, I’m cleaning up my language”. Could people be substituted for place and what suggestions do you have for cleaning up languag
