Kate’s 2¢: “The prodigal daughter” by Mette Ivie Harrison

“The prodigal daughter” by Mette Ivie Harrison

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I suspect this brings up the quandary many young women of the Mormon faith wrestle with from time to time. I don’t think this story will assist them in making a decision.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mette Ivie Harrison (born 13 September 1970) is an American novelist. She writes young adult fiction and in 2014 began publishing an adult mystery series. Her background as a Mormon has influenced her topics of interest as a writer, especially in the A Linda Willheim Mystery series which focuses on a Mormon woman within her religious community. Her novel, Mira, Mirror won the Utah Letters About Literature award in 2006, and three other novels were finalists for the AML Awards in 2007, 2014 and 2015.

   Mette Ivie was born on 13 September 1970 in Summit, New Jersey.[1] Her father was Evan Ivie (d. 2020), a computer scientist who worked for thirteen years at Bell Labs and being involved in developing Unix programming language. She was the ninth of eleven children,[2] eight of whom followed their father into careers involving computer programming.

   When she was ten years old, Evan Ivie moved the family to Provo, Utah, where he began teaching computer programming at Brigham Young University, a position that he would hold for twenty years.[3]

   As a teenager Mette Ivie studied German, and she spent 1985 attending a German gymnasium. In 1988 she received BYU’s “Ezra Taft Benson Scholarship”.[2] She graduated from BYU two years later with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in German Literature. She received a full scholarship to attend Princeton University and in 1995 earned a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures. She wrote her dissertation on the female Bildungsroman of the 18th century.[4][2]

   She was married to Matt Harrison, and they had six children. In 2021 the couple are finalizing a divorce.[3][2]

   In 2017 she was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, which initially made her hyper-aware of her differences from neurotypical people. She wrote about her experience with high-functioning autism in Sunstone magazine, where she noted that participation in the LDS Church helped her to make social connections that she otherwise would not have pursued. She described how her lack of “normal facial expressions” leads other church members to underestimate the depth of her feelings, especially depression.[5] Since Harrison does not intuitively understand human interactions, she attributes her proficiency in portraying human interactions in her writing to her need to analyze human behavior closely.[5]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The prodigal daughter DB107011

Harrison, Mette Ivie. Reading time: 6 hours, 17 minutes.

Read by Kirsten Potter.

Mystery and Detective Stories

Bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has grown increasingly disillusioned with her faith and has begun marriage counseling with her husband, Kurt. But when the teenaged babysitter of one of her grandchildren vanishes, Linda begins investigating. She discovers the girl was the victim of a terrible crime and searches to find her. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021.

Downloaded: April 30, 2022

Download The prodigal daughter