Review
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Title: Confessions of a Once Upon A Time Mormon Girl
Author: Maureen Clark
Publisher: Hypatia Press
Genre: Memoir
Year Published: 2026
Number of Pages: 273
Binding: Paper; Kindle
ISBN: 978-1839197215
Price: Paper, 13.99; Kindle 5.99
Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
Maureen Clark, the award-winning author of This Insatiable August, who retired from the University of Utah after twenty years as a writing professor and as the director of the University Writing Center, has authored a powerful and important memoir, Confessions of a Once Upon A Time Mormon Girl. In Confessions, Clark powerfully narrates her life in, struggles with, and ultimate exit from the Mormon Church. Titles can have vital meaning, and this is very true for this memoir. Clark’s experiences as a “Mormon Girl” are central to the narrative and impact her entire life. “Confessions” is the perfect word because Clark’s confessions to her audience make this book powerful and personal, allowing her readers not only to feel her experiences but also to feel safe expressing their own feelings about the Church.
Clark begins her narrative by stating that after thirty years of marriage, her husband announced that he was leaving the Church. She calls this “The other shoe.” She then quickly states that the first shoe had dropped the night before they were sealed in the Manti temple when they had both been left shocked and reeling by their pre–1990 version endowments. This experience weaves the narrative together and pulls the reader into Clark’s life.
One of the things that Clark does VERY WELL throughout her narrative is describe what she was taught in LDS doctrine versus the real-world impact of those teachings, what life and people were really like, and how this hurt her soul and left her troubled. She does it in a way that allows all to feel and connect whether they have experienced these same concerns or not. Here is one example:
I lived in a safe, blue-collar neighborhood. My earliest frustrations with the church were more teenage angst than anything else, and the church pushed against my edges more and more the older I became. Inside my head, I was writing a storyline that had nothing to do with perfection. The church intruded on my space. I started hearing lessons on the Word of Wisdom and realized that Uncle Ad and Grandpa Record were considered sinners, which was absolute trash. No one was going to tell me that there was anything wrong with them. I was proud of my mom for ignoring protocol and buying Uncle Ad his beer and cigars. It made him so happy. Anyway, it seemed a higher law to be kind. I was very opiniated about that, and everything else. (p. 50)
In another passage, I love how Clark put into almost poetic words the feelings of many Mormon teens who are made to feel that their natural progression through puberty and normal curiosity is somehow gross and sinful:
Shame and guilt. If there’s one thing religion has always been good at, it’s shame and guilt. If there’s a religion that doesn’t do this, let me know. It was one thing to feel guilty about not being able to stay perfect for a whole day, but this morality thing was something different. I might have loved my breasts with a kind of teenage bravado, but I would never tell anyone about it. I was sure my friends didn’t think like I did. They didn’t dance naked in the house when no one was home. They were normal. (p. 77)
After hearing about “Little factories” and the sinful nature of sexual interest and curiosity, most, if not all, Mormon teens have probably felt like Clark that, “I was sure my friends didn’t think like I did,” WHEN really, most of their friends were naturally and normally thinking just like that. Clark gives permission to her readers to embrace and express their feelings and concerns that they experienced or are experiencing in the Church.
Over the course of her narrative, Clark intimately and bluntly addresses many concerns and experiences that she had that are common, but most are afraid to express. MANY Mormon women who read Confessions will relate deeply with Clark’s experiences and raw feelings as a new mother:
Whose body is this? I thought the next morning. It didn’t feel like mine. My belly was soft as a bowl of risen bread dough and covered with stretch marks. It was alien and blubbery. At least I could see my feet again. I hadn’t seen them for months, from any angle. Was I still only nineteen years old? My body was so ugly I couldn’t imagine Jon would ever want sex again. The pain of giving birth was already fading from my memory. The future was a tangled unknown path of motherhood. (p. 99)
SO many women have probably had these exact feelings and have felt like failures for feeling them. These feelings are very normal, but the way Mormonism teaches Motherhood, they feel wrong for experiencing them and have no one with whom to discuss them. Clark helps us to have the important discussion that needs to be had about what Mormon women feel but are not allowed to express.
Clark does not shy away from the tough experiences in her life. She frankly and candidly addresses her committing marital infidelity and the years that it took for her and her husband to be able to learn to communicate with each other. She also expertly connects all of these to how they were raised and taught growing up in the Church.
Lest a reader think that Confessions is all bad news or ragging on the Church, Clark describes many beautiful experiences too. She tells of positive experiences with other Mormon women. Of loving her time as a Young Women’s president, the benefits she experienced as a member, and the good done by the Church.
Confessions is a quick read. The book is only 271 pages long, and there are many pages with only a single quote on them, or that are blank, or only filled with short passages. The typeface used is nice and large. The pages are well designed and not packed with type. A person could easily and comfortably read this book over several hours.
I highly recommend Confessions of a Once Upon A Time Mormon Girl to one and all. Maureen Clark is an amazing author. She tells her story very well. Many people have published their story of leaving the LDS church in recent years, so some may say, “why should I read yet another one,” “do we really need this,” or “why should I care that she left the Church?” It is true, there have been many of these, and honestly, most are easily forgotten. But not Confessions. Clark’s expertise as a writer and poet gives her telling of her story great power. Add to that how she deftly weaves her life and experiences with LDS history and the various challenges and concerns that people who leave experience in the Church. She addresses these well and incorporates serious information and contemplation about these concerns without them sounding like a bunch of whines. You can tell by how she writes and explains things why they are serious.
People are leaving the LDS Church in larger numbers than ever before, and Clark brings up important reasons as to why that needs to be addressed and considered by those who stay and those who leave. Confessions are an important source of information and contemplation. It should be read by all who are safe in their place in the Church, who are struggling with their place in the Church, who have relatives who have left the Church, or who have left themselves. Confessions will spark many important and needed conversations.