Title: And All Eternity Shook
Author: Jacob L. Bender
Publisher: Ships of Hagoth
Genre: Memoir
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: 126
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 979-8210184214
Price: 9.99
Reviewed by Rachel Helps
And All Eternity Shook is billed as experimental Mormon fiction. There’s even the “This is not for you” quote from Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves on the dedication page. But by experimental fiction standards, this book is pretty tame. It frequently uses the technique of interweaving several different narratives to describe Elder Warner’s mission and his subsequent return home to find that his mother is dying of cancer. The juxtaposition of those narratives can make for interesting connections. My favorite of these is when the story of the Elder Warner’s bike accident is intertwined with the story of him hearing about his mother’s cancer diagnosis.
The book’s way of dropping the reader into missionary stories strongly reminded me of Nothing Very Important and Other Stories. Nothing Very Important is longer, and while the main character is more removed from the reader, the stories about the other ward members are vivid and a little disturbing. In And All Eternity Shook, the focus remains on the Elder Warner’s inner life and we don’t get to know any of his investigators very well. It feels intensely personal. His faith meanderings range from “I’ll tell everyone I taught that the church was a lie!” to “if I could just pray all night, God will save my mother.” There are moments when Elder Warner experiences spiritual comfort and confidence as well as despair.
I had a moment in this book where I felt strong empathy for Elder Warner. He experiences a miraculous recovery from his bicycle accident. Knowing that God can make miracles happen, his faith is challenged even more when God does not miraculously preserve his mother against cancer. I’ve long prayed for my daughter’s disability to disappear, but it will not. I know that God has the power to heal her, so I must accept that he simply decided not to make a miracle happen for her.
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