Things I Didn't Do

Things I Didn't Do is an intimate and epic reckoning with the places and the people who shape our lives. Ryder Mikkelson's life changed forever the day he fell from a loaded pack mule high in the Book Cliffs of eastern Utah. He was seven years old, and some things would never quite be the same. The way he walks. How he rides a horse. The way he looks at a family photograph. Even so, Ryder grows up surrounded by the love of friends and family, cultivating his talents and building a life he's proud of. But ghosts never fully depart. Years later, when Ryder's twin daughters return home from college with unsettling news, long-buried questions resurface, and Ryder must face truths he has spent a lifetime avoiding. ​ In writing both fiercely intimate and expansively lyrical, Anderson crafts a story of a man haunted by memory, grappling with identity, and undone by revelation.

About the Author :
Karin Anderson is the award-winning author of What Falls Away and Before Us Like a Land of Dreams. She is a gardener, writer, mother, wanderer, and self-described heretic, as well as the co-editor of the acclaimed anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild. Anderson has been recognized by the Reading the West Book Awards (fiction longlist), the Brigham Young University-Charles Redd Center for Western Studies (recipient of the Clarence Dixon Taylor Historical Research Award), 15 Bytes Book Awards (fiction finalist), and the Association of Mormon Letters Awards (fiction winner for What Falls Away). Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Dialogue, Quarter After Eight, Western Humanities Review, Sunstone, Saranac Review, American Literary Review, and Fiddleback. A former professor of English at Utah Valley University, Anderson holds degrees from Utah State University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Utah. She hails from the Great Basin and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Review :
"Tourists by the millions visit Utah for its breathtaking landscapes, but this novel focuses on families that have lived in the eastern part of the state for generations amid both the beauty and the hardships...The book's evolving portrait of family relationships, even with some of its difficult members, is convincing, warm without veering into sentimentality. Thrilling Western adventure frames heartfelt family drama as a boy searches for himself." --KIRKUS REVIEWS "Things I Didn't Do masterfully portrays the precarious lives of a hardscrabble Utah family grappling with haunting pasts and uncertain futures. Unflinchingly unromantic--yet wonderfully tender and hopeful at its core--this novel transports readers to the harsh landscapes and circumstances of the real American West, where everything depends on who and where you come from. Anderson is a brave, compassionate storyteller, and this is an extraordinary book." --SHELLEY READ, Go As a River "This novel moves like memory. The shape of what's missing stays with you, like something forgotten until you see it again--familiar, and changed. Anderson writes without sentiment, without apology [...] in favor of something harder, and truer. What a wonder!" --MORGAN TALTY, Fire Exit "Things I Didn't Do is a capital-L life story, told in shimmering prose. In Ryder Mikkelson's life--despite or because of his constraints--we recognize our own: how others' expectations shape us, how family and friends are both shelter and storm, and how getting from here to there is often about degree, not distance. With deft storytelling and deep heart, Anderson guides us through." --CRAIG LANCASTER, Northward Dreams "Daring, lithe, and mesmerizing. Conjuring a bear, shapeshifters, river chasms, and abandoned mines, Anderson again shows new, irreducible ways of seeing the American West and kept me reading late into the night. I am in awe of the limitless power of Karin Anderson's prose to match the beauty and terror of all it describes with a precision that will leave readers, as it has left me, changed." --KATHLEEN BLACKBURN, Loose of Earth "A poignant tale of family, resilience, and the quiet beauty of the West Desert. I didn't think I could love Things I Didn't Do more than Anderson's last novel, but I do. This story has something special for everyone, with moments to recognize and cherish on every page." --ANNE HOLMAN, The King's English Bookshop "With Anderson's powerful command of voice, rural Utah itself is a character, its spare, sometimes harsh landscape lovingly described in the language of the people who inhabit it." --CATHERINE WELLER, Weller Book Works "Equal parts joy and heartache, Things I Didn't Do explores themes of place and identity as layered and complex as the region's geology. Anderson's portrayal of masculinity is nothing short of remarkable--a nuanced and multifaceted depiction that defies stereotypes, offering a rare and necessary look at flawed yet deeply compelling men." --MICHAEL MCLANE, editor of The Once and Future Lake: Stories for Great Salt Lake "A moving novel about the forces that fracture family and identity, and what might make them whole. Karin Anderson crafts Ryder Mikkelson's story with grace, love, and a keen awareness of the broader world, inviting us to look beyond ourselves and into the lives and stories of others." --ERICA OLSEN, Recapture