'Calling Out' by Rae Meadows
This debut novel looks at the seedy underbelly and the seeming contradiction of Mormon escort services
By Alexandra Edwards
Published: July 22nd, 2006 | 11:10pm
Rae Meadows knows a few things about sex work. As an MFA student at the University of Utah, she answered the phones and set up dates for an escort service. "I had a strange, sad, fascinating, and funny time there and I took notes because I knew I would want to use the material someday," says Rae.
And use the material she did. It forms the basis of her debut novel, just released by MacAdam/Cage, titled Calling Out. The book tells the story of Jane, a twenty-something New Yorker, who has abandoned the city for the desert in an attempt to sort out her life. But when she takes a job answering the phones at an escort service, she begins to lose the ability to judge healthy and unhealthy behaviors. Rae explains, "The escort world, rife with contradictions and lonely people looking to connect, gave me the ideal landscape for the character's anomie." Jane searches for a sense of self at her job, through a past lover, and among her friends. One of those, Ralf, a Mormon native to Utah, acts in some sense as her moral compass, while at the same time allowing Meadows to sprinkle the novel with strange anecdotes and facts about Utah and its original settlers. "Did you know the church is so primed for Armageddon that they've been stockpiling dried grain under the city for thirty years?" he asks at one point the novel.
Sex work and Mormonism fit together in strange ways, and that's most of the fun of this book. With both, Meadows touches on one of her main themes, which she characterizes as "demystifying the 'other.'" It's a bold project, but one that is taken on far too rarely. "Although my writing isn't politically motivated per se, I do believe that trying to understand otherness, as opposed to fearing or demonizing it, cannot be undervalued," Rae notes.
Yet, what makes this book ultimately enjoyable are the people at its center, in all their flawed glory. This is a story for those of us in our mid-twenties, not a coming-of-age tale, but rather a quiet meditation on self-realization and the strength that it requires. It's a terrific debut from a strong author, a brave female voice, and hopefully there will be much more to come.
MacAdam/Cage, $22.00, 230 pages
Issue #35
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