Worth its salt
Road novel features Utah, the Jazz and a renegade LDS missionary
By Brandon Griggs
The Salt Lake Tribune
Of the 348 pages in Darren DeFrain's debut novel, only 37 are set in Utah.
Yet the state's cultural influence is woven throughout the book, from its
unorthodox Mormonism and obsessive history of the Utah Jazz to its title, The
Salt Palace.
DeFrain lives in the Midwest but went to high school in Layton and earned a
B.A. from the University of Utah. His novel is about an unpredictable road trip
from western Michigan, where DeFrain earned his doctorate, to suburban
Kaysville.
"I wanted to draw on places I know really well," he says. As for the Salt
Palace title, he says, "That place has always sounded so mythic to me. I also
like how it implies something semi-permanent and important, yoked to something
common and crystalline. I think, thematically, it just works for what the
characters are searching for."
The Salt Palace's main character, Brian, is a 30-ish lapsed Mormon working in
the consumer loans office of a Kalamazoo, Mich., bank. Brian is smart and
literate but somewhat adrift - his job is a dead end, he can't commit to his
girlfriend, Rhoda, and he hides his dissolute lifestyle from his devoutly LDS
family. When his brother Zach calls with the news that their parents are selling
the family home and moving to a condo in Park City, Brian reluctantly agrees to
drive home and help move furniture.
Through a campus bulletin board, Brian finds Randy, a stranger seeking a ride
to Utah. Randy is a coarse ex-Mormon with a handlebar mustache, an artificial
arm, a loaded handgun and a prickly, secretive manner. Thrown together by fate,
the pair hits the road, tracing the pioneers' path from Nauvoo to Utah. It won't
give away much to reveal their uneasy journey takes some unexpected detours.
"I love road novels," DeFrain says by phone from Wichita, Kan., where he runs
the creative writing program at Wichita State University. "I think we still
believe, in lots of ways, that redemption comes from somewhere else. So I liked
the idea that instead of Brian heading out for some redemptive grail away from
home, his adventure is actually all about just getting home."
Despite the obvious similarities that he shares with his protagonist, DeFrain
says little of his novel is autobiographical. Like Brian, DeFrain railed against
Utah's dominant culture as a young man. Unlike Brian, DeFrain is an only child,
is not Mormon and has never taken a road trip with a one-armed man.
DeFrain sees Brian and Randy as two sides of the same character. Both men
grapple with questions of faith and belonging. But while Brian is constrained
and timid, Randy is blunt and comfortable in his own skin. Randy serves as a
catalyst to jolt Brian out of his inertia while emerging as the novel's most
memorable presence.
"I feel like I've known a lot of Randys over the years," DeFrain says. "Maybe
not a one-armed, renegade Mormon missionary . . . but people who are rough
around the edges. I think there's a poetry in crass speech, and I've always been
interested in that."
DeFrain began writing the novel in 1997 but stalled after completing a rough
draft. Then in 2000 his computer crashed and wiped out everything he'd written.
But when DeFrain sat down to retype the novel from memory, he found a new
momentum that helped him finish his manuscript, polish it and eventually sell it
to New Issues Press at Western Michigan University. The Salt Palace is a
different novel than the one DeFrain set out to write. A passionate Utah Jazz
fan, he planned to write a basketball-themed novel before realizing that such a
book would limit his potential readership. So he set The Salt Palace against the
backdrop of the 1996 NBA playoffs, when the Jazz went to the Western Conference
Finals before losing to Seattle in seven games.
To work his love of Jazz minutiae into the novel without bogging down his
story, DeFrain added extensive footnotes with anecdotes about Karl Malone, Jerry
Sloan, Hot Rod Hundley and other Jazz figures. He also included footnotes that
detail Mormon history and practices.
"I like the parallel narratives," explains DeFrain, who fought his publisher
successfully to keep the footnotes at the bottom of the pages instead of at the
back of the book. "And I liked the idea that you could ignore that 'footnoted"
stuff if you weren't interested."
DeFrain hopes readers of The Salt Palace will come away with a deeper
understanding of Utah. Writing the book certainly brought him a deeper
understanding of Mormonism, which he researched thoroughly. And when he came
across a question he couldn't answer, he turned to a firsthand source: the LDS
missionaries who often showed up at his apartment.
"It seemed like every time [I got stuck], there'd be a knock at the door," he
says with a chuckle. "So we'd make a deal. I'd say, 'I'll listen to everything
you have to say . . . if you answer a few questions.' And they did."
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Contact Brandon Griggs at
griggs@sltrib.com or 801-257-8689. Send comments about this story to
livingeditor@sltrib.com.