From my birthplace in Los Angeles to my current home in New York City, the geographical highway of my life has carried me far and wide across the face of North America. It's been a significant journey--but one that pales beside the less easily traced spiritual road that has run nearly parallel to it for these past thirty-five years.

Though it may seem so to some, I don't believe that religious faith is either built or destroyed overnight. It's like a mountain that buckles upward over eons, even while being torn down a piece at a time by wind and rain. It's as long and involved a process as a lifetime's journey across a continent, and there are vast parts of it that we have as little control over as a child has over where his parents choose to live.

I was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1967. In 1995, I abandoned the Church--an act that would have been unthinkable to me for most of the time in between. To most outside observers, I'm sure that my apostasy seemed inexplicable and abrupt. To certain others, I'm certain it seemed inevitable and long overdue. The truth, I think, lies somewhere not in between, but rather in a realm that paradoxically partakes of both extremes.

It lies in the story of the journey from 1967 to 1995, from Los Angeles to New York City--from faith to apostasy...