Delivering Virtue by Brian Kindall is a different kind of western story. Didier Rain, a dissolute poet is hired by an offshoot Mormon sect to deliver a bride to their Prophet Nehi in his isolated compound in northern Utah. Rain is shocked to find that the ‘bride’ is an infant named Virtue, but the prospect of a $10,000 payday causes him to accept the challenge.

From Rain’s departure the story takes many quite unexpected turns, with aspects of mysticism, fantasy, and strange glimpses of the future thrown into a hard-boiled western story of a not-so-good man’s journey of self-discovery. The author skillfully weaves the mystical elements into the story, with flashbacks into Rain’s past making them even credible.

The narrator has a notably extensive vocabulary and elegance of prose suitable for the poetic aspirations of the character, and it even includes made-up words, such as ‘spelunkulatory’. Some readers may find phrases such as “discussing business in a private glossolalia,” a little off-putting, but personally, I enjoyed the depth of vocabulary and the writing style. Luckily ereaders have inbuilt dictionary to help ascertain a word’s meaning, because it is not always clear from the context of the passages.

All up, it’s a great story, and it has a strange, but somehow satisfying ending that I won’t spoil by revealing. 5 stars.

"A tragicomic story, Delivering Virtue employs biting social commentary and stinging critiques of a variety of religious faiths with Chaucerian ribaldry. Threads of satire are skillfully woven into a tapestry of humor and pathos, magicial realism, and historical fact, along with swashbuckling adventure, depraved violence, and moments of heartrending tenderness." A 2015 IndieFab Book of the Year Finalist for Literary Fiction.

Brian Kindall creates a memorably delightful character, dissolute, shabby-genteel poet Didier Rain, in order to tell the picaresque story of his latest novel, Delivering Virtue.

In 1854, Rain is approached by the Church of the Resurrected Truth, a splinter Mormon offshoot, and hired as bodyguard to deliver a child named Virtue deep into the Western wilderness so that she can be the bride to their prophet Nehi. The energetic, rambling quest-story that Kindall unfolds from this premise is both gripping and at times semi-comic.

Rain and his little charge encounter lunatics, killers, American Indians, fanatics, and, eventually, the prophet himself and his followers.

As the narrative climaxes and unhinges, Kindall steps up the violence of his narrative and its poignancy, and the combination of action, cynicism and dogged hope (with heavy helpings of magical realism) is oddly effective. A remarkable and sui generis historical novel.