Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin
Get your copy
Better World Books • Google Play • Amazon • Apple Books • Audible
“Captivating…candid and insightful.”
—Publisher's Weekly
"A searching, sensual celebration of one woman’s struggle for identity and autonomy."
—Kirkus Reviews
"In this achingly candid memoir . . . Hardy’s confessional tone is engaging, and her story is moving."
—Booklist
"Endearing, liberating, and exquisitely written, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go. I loved this book.”
—Daniel Jones, Modern Love editor, The New York Times
Nicole Hardy's memoir, Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin, was inspired by her essay "Single, Female, Mormon, Alone”, first published in The New York Times and chosen as "notable" in 2012's Best American Essays. In this book, Nicole explores how she came, at the age of thirty-five, to a crossroads between her faith and her identity.During her childhood and throughout her twenties, Nicole held absolute conviction in her Mormon faith. But as she aged out of the Church’s “singles ward” and entered her thirties, she struggled to merge the life she envisioned for herself with the prescribed roles of homemaker, wife, and mother.
In this book, Nicole chronicles the extraordinary lengths she went to in an attempt to reconcile her human needs with her spiritual life—flying across the country for dates with Mormon men, taking up salsa dancing as a source for physical contact, even moving to the island of Grand Cayman, where the ocean and scuba diving provided some solace. But neither secular pursuits nor church guidance could help Nicole prepare for the dilemma she would eventually face: a crisis of faith that caused her to question everything she’d grown up believing.