ISBN: 0306818043/ ISBN-13: 9780306818042

I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth

(Hardcover)

by Brenda Peterson

Da Capo Press, 02/2010, 277 pages, English

Growing up between Baptist Endtimers and Apocalyptic Greens, this is a rollicking tale of survival. In Brenda Peterson's unusual memoir, Fundamentalism meets deep ecology. Childhood with her forest ranger father in the high Sierras led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave that world. Peterson survived fierce 'sword drill' competitions over total recall of the Scriptures, awkward dinner table questions (Will Rapture take the cat, too?) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious and loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind.