Thayne's unreliable first-person narrative relays the story, which explores themes including belief, faith, science, and mysticism.

Considered an unreliable narrator,[2] Thayne works for the United States Geological Survey and longs be a scientist and a scholar, but displays little understanding of what scientific inquiry entails.

[3] The book is told from four points of view: Thayne, poet and mistress Dora Daphne Tanner, conjoined twins William and Edward Babcock, and a frame narrator known as the "Redactor.

[4] Rosalynde Welch, writing for Dialogue, called the novel "a wonderfully strange, deeply philosophical narrative that interrogates the nature of the first person" while drawing on Mormon traditions of diaries and regionalism.

[7] In 2017 also for Dialogue, Shane R. Peterson stated that with The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell, Peck "moved the [Mormon Literature] genre into the twenty-first century because of his willingness to push boundaries, embrace the unorthodox, and explore difficult themes.