First published 2024
Lucy stands in Utah territory, watching a wagon train roll closer. A decade earlier, an anti-Mormon mob drove her family from Illinois. Now some of those same men head toward California, but Lucy will not run again. Katrina guides her four children westward, prepared for hardship but not the brutality that awaits them. The mother will battle to protect her family as threats multiply. Sally finds herself the fourth wife of a man she barely knows, caught in an unwanted marriage. When her husband commits to a scheme of religious retribution, Sally faces an impossible choice between loyalty and conscience, knowing rebellion could mean death. The paths of these three women intersect at one of the nation's most savage mass murders. Their stories unfold against the backdrop of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where ordinary lives collide with extraordinary brutality in the Utah wilderness.
Genres: drama, historical-fiction, adult-fiction, american-history
Vibes: dark, gritty, intense, thought-provoking, tragic
Tropes: historical-tragedy, moral-dilemma, multiple-point-of-view, survival-against-odds
Setting: Utah Territory, Illinois, California, Mountain Meadows, Utah Wilderness
Period: 19th-century, 1850s
Paperback
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, murder, violence