Stories of the afterlife, the rugged Northwest, and the early days of Mormonism—by a ferociously imaginative new writer

“The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death” is a comic vision of the afterlife in which everyone in heaven is the age they were when they died—a fantasy both profound and absurd. In the tough, tender “About as Fast as This Car Can Go,” a teenager gets introduced to crime after his father is released from jail, and in “Winter Elders,” Mormon missionaries pursue a man who has left the fold—with gruesome results.

In the concluding triptych, Vestal takes on the legends and legacy of Mormonism. “Diviner,” the final piece, is an indelible portrait of the young Joseph Smith, in the days when he was not yet the founder of the Mormon faith but a man hired to find buried treasure.