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Clive Scott Chisholm wryly describes himself as a "fugitive from the American Dream." A displaced Canadian and a legally "registered alien, " Chisholm set out from his home in upstate New York in 1985 to discover the origins of that dream. In Following the Wrong God Home, he recounts his personal odyssey, describing the people he encountered and the unforgettable stories they told. Chisholm's solo journey on foot from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City retraced the 1100-mile trek of nineteenth-century Mormon pioneers. Along the way, he plays off the Mormon search for the dream of "community" against the modern search for the American dream of "individuality." He muses over how much and how little things have changed in the century-and-a-half since 1847 and creates a narrative that centers on the American dreamers he came across from Omaha to Salt Lake City. He also invokes philosophy, economics, and geology, and ruminates on the differing histories and manners of Americans, Canadians, and Mormons. "I'm not an emissary of 'truth, ' but an observer of confounding human experience, mine included, " Chisholm claims. Unlike Mormon or other American Dreamers, Chisholm has no testimony to offer. His writing is hard-edged, sardonic, full of biting humor and, at times, brutally revealing. "I don't tell the obvious about American dreaming, " he says. "I show its contradictions, confusions--many painful--and the dimly lit back roads of religion and history in which people might find a different understanding of themselves, their neighbors, and their nation. Besides, dreams are what people get when they fall asleep. I write about waking up."
