Everything in Color: A Love Story

In her luminous debut, Stalvey meditates on her separation from fundamentalist Christianity and how she found love despite questioning her faith. Born into a “lineage of preachers and teachers,” young Stephanie and her sister grow up so conservative that they’re discouraged from looking at “unnecessarily graphic” Bible illustrations. Sermons about sin and sacrifice lead Stephanie to self-harm at an early age (pinching herself, she speaks to Jesus: “This pain is nothing... compared to what I deserve”), and her family considers corporal punishment essential to correct children’s inborn sinfulness. “Everything was either black or white,” Stephanie reflects, and the art literalizes this in monochrome anecdotes from her youth. In the present day, rendered in full color, adult Stephanie is married with a young son, teaching art, and deciding whether she wants to return to church. Her perspective changed, as fundamentalist parents often fear, in college. Though she initially steeled herself against “dangerous ideas coming from a secular professor,” she started to ask questions in her Bible study group, and her romance with gentle seminary student James made her doubt the harsh, punitive version of love she was raised in. Stalvey’s sensual, organic art is especially striking in the full-color passages. She devotes pages to richly symbolic compositions of saints, devils, wolves, and nature. Readers of Craig Thompson’s Blankets will fall for this nuanced self-portrait. Agent: Amelia Appel, Triada US. (Apr.)