The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Part One

Fifteen-year-old Enid Gardner is a self-proclaimed “weird Mormon girl.” When she isn’t chatting with Joseph Smith or the Book of Abraham mummy, she’s searching for herself between the spaces of doubt and belief. Along the way, she must grapple with her Mormon faith as it adapts to the twenty-first century. She also must confront the painful mysteries at the heart of her strained relationship with her ailing mother.

This edition of The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl recasts the award-winning webcomic as a two-part graphic novel. With revised and previously unpublished comics, it features the familiar story that captivated thousands online, yet offers new glimpses into Enid’s year-long odyssey.

Praise for The Garden of Enid:

“Comics are always meant to help us take a look at ourselves and laugh—something sorely needed in Mormon Culture. Enid, with her wise-aleck streak, her unusual and difficult home life, and her overly developed brain, is no usual Mormon fifteen year old girl. With late-night imaginary conversations with long-dead prophets, well-told moments of loneliness and self doubt, snarky Sunday-class encounters, vulnerable, tense conversations with her closeted best friend, to midnight faith crises, Enid brings something real, something faith-affirming, something beyond Happy Valley and seminary videos and Saturday’s warrior to the LDS audience.” —Sarah Dunster, author of Lightning Tree and Mile 21

¿“I feel lucky to have lived at the time The Garden of Enid was being published, because it gave me the chance to meet one of the best characters in Mormon fiction. From the beginning, she's sharp, sardonic, and frighteningly straightforward—it was hard to know whether to be amused or intimidated by this self-proclaimed weird Mormon girl. But she's so delightfully unassuming, it wasn’t long before she drew me in. Enid made me wonder what it’s like to fly through the cosmos as an unorganized intelligence, made me think about what God wonders when he lies in bed at night, and taught me how to make it through Girls’ Camp safely. Get to know her: this book is a classic whether you rush through it from cover to cover or linger over each moment, as the original readers did, at a pace of a few comics a week.” —James Goldberg, author of The Five Books of Jesus

“I’m at a loss how to convey how deeply The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl affected me. Enid is witty, insightful, ardent, and captures many of the particular and quirky aspects of Mormonism. More than that, I found myself drawn into this fully realized character in unexpected ways. Her wholehearted engagement with life as she tries to find her place in the world had me rooting for her success over and over. I ended up genuinely caring about Enid and her story. Hales has created a world that will be an enduring addition to Mormon Literature. Don't miss this delightful work.” —Steven L. Peck, author of A Short Stay in Hell and The Scholar of Moab

¿“They told us we were a chosen generation. And now I know why: We get to read The Garden of Enid! Your Mormon nerd cred is directly proportional to how many of these cartoons you laugh at. The Garden of Enid has it all: laughs, esoterica, faith, messy hair, messy people, and messy endings. The best Mormon comic collection since Cal Grondahl and Pat Bagley.” —Stephen Carter, author of iPlates