Mormons meet Evel Knievel – it’s certainly not the most obvious of set-ups, but it makes for a noteworthy first novel from short story writer Shawn Vestal. Idaho in the mid-1970s, and two teenagers are nursing ambitions beyond run-of-the-mill adolescent escapist fantasies. Loretta is already the sister-wife of a much older man, a polygamist and fundamentalist with a large clan of his own. En masse they look like the “Ingalls Wilders”; their old-fashioned ways an “embarrassment to good, normal Mormons” such as Jason and his family. Both kids want to break out of the lives they’re living – Loretta just wants freedom, while loved-up Jason longs for the kind of adventure his idol, Evel Knievel, embodies – so together they embark on a great escape. Vestal conjures up the necessary claustrophobia and privation to great effect, this sense of slow emotional suffocation expertly mirrored in the barren, hot desert landscape.
Daredevils is published by One (£8.99). Click here to buy it for £6.99
