Growing Up in the City of the Saints by Gary Shepherd

This book consists of over 40 memoir vignettes that capture significant learning experiences of identical twin brothers—Gary and Gordon Shepherd—as they grow up in Mormon Salt Lake City during the 1950s and 1960s. Their stories in the first part of the book feature shared adventures with a wide range of friends, family, and adult models who shape the brothers' appreciation for basic American ideals of democracy, equality, diversity, cooperation, and tolerance—especially as taught and modeled in the public schools they attended. Vignette stories in the second part of the book highlight later periods of time in the brothers' lives as they mature and assume adult responsibilities while maintaining and strengthening friendship ties and their youthful core values. Their stories in both parts of the book are peppered with humor, good will, indignation, sadness, and even tragedy but also with rays of hope for the preservation of American ideals in today's troubling times. While the twins' early lives were shaped by the Mormon culture in which they were raised, their memoir writings in this book are far from being devoted exclusively to Mormon or LDS Church topics. A broad audience of readers who enjoy incisively written memoir accounts —even if they grew up elsewhere and in different eras than the Shepherds did—will encounter universal coming of age experiences that resonate with their own.