It's kinda funny that they make a bee-line for the most depraved city in the country.

Speak for yourself, you elite East Coaster living in decadent new York.

But in seriousness, your comment reminds me of an LA Times series I read last year about Muslims living in Las Vegas. The question about keeping religious in such a depraved city came up several times.

Actually, in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky describes a certain sect of Russian Orthodox who sought suffering- the false confessor to Raskolnikov's crime is one of them, the point being that he confessed in order to go to prison and maximize his suffering. Not that I'm saying anyone's doing the same thing here or anything.

Suffering sucks.

That reminds me of a sect in Thomas Klise's self-published novel The Last Western (which I meant to blog about but never did). Members of the sect serve time in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, substituting out the actual criminals who do. (The book takes place in the future (of the 1970's, when it was written), so I guess it takes liberty with the actual legality of such an action.

I remember you mentioning that book. Is it difficult to come by? Is it good?

Yes, it's difficult to come by. Was it good? In many ways, I found it to be fascinating in a sort of unconventional way. I wouldn't say it's good in a strong literary sense, but there was something about it...