Steven Peck has imagined a world ever-so-slightly tweaked from this real one, butwell, why wouldn’t conjoined twins have an independent consciousness, bumblebees be more dependent on faith than wings, and Einstein sing German nursery rhymes? The Scholar of Moab explores the otherworld of nature, imagination, and mind.” Brown Fiction Contest, and Second Place in the Eugene England Memorial Essay Contest. Other awards include the Meyhew Short Story Contest, First Place at Warp and Weave, Honorable Mention in the 2011 Brookie and D.K. Peck was nominated for the 2011 Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. His poetry has appeared in Dialogue, Bellowing Ark, Irreantum, Red Rock Review and other magazines. His creative works include a novel, The Gift of the King's Jeweler (2003 Covenant Communications). Steven also co-edited a volume on environmental stewardship. His scientific work has appeared in American Naturalist, Newsweek, Evolution, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Biological Theory, Agriculture and Human Values, Biology & Philosophy. An evolutionary ecologist at Brigham Young University, Peck teaches the philosophy of biology. Righteous Moabites accuse Dora of the murder, but who really killed their child? Did a coyote dingo the baby? Was it an alien abduction as Dora claims? Was it Hyrum? Or could it have been the only witness to the crime, one of a pair of Oxford-educated conjoined twins who cowboy in the La Sals on sabbatical? To make matters worse, Hyrum's illicit affair with Dora Tanner, a local poet thought to be mad, results in the delivery of a bouncing baby boy who vanishes the night of his birth. Young Hyrum Thayne, an unrefined geological surveyor, steals a massive dictionary out of the Grand County library in a midnight raid, startling the good people of Moab into believing a nefarious band of Book of Mormon thugs, the Gadianton Robbers, has arisen again. What happens when a two-headed cowboy, a high school dropout, and a poet abducted by aliens come together in 1970s Moab, Utah? The Scholar of Moab, a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the hoary La Sal Mountains. The Scholar of Moab explores the otherworld of nature, imagination, and mind.' -BROOKE WILLIAMS, author of Halflives 'Steven Peck has imagined a world ever-so-slightly tweaked from this real one. 2011 Best Novel, Association for Mormon letters

The Scholar of Moab by Steven L. Peck