Vengeance Is Mine
The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath
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Published in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows was a bombshell of a book, revealing the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history, when settlers in southwestern Utah slaughtered more than 100 members of a California-bound wagon train in
1857. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown examine the aftermath of this atrocity.
Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders' attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies. Investigations by both governmental and church bodies were stymied by stonewalling and political wrangling. While nine men were eventually
indicted, five were captured and only one, John D. Lee, was executed.
The book examines the maneuvering of the defense and prosecution in Lee's two trials, the second trial ending in Lee's conviction. Turley and Brown explore the fraught relationship between Lee and church president Brigham Young, and assess what role, if any, Young played in
the cover-up. They trace the fates of the other perpetrators, including the harrowing end of Nephi Johnson, who screamed "Blood! Blood! Blood!" in his delirium as he lay dying more than sixty years after the massacre.
Turley and Brown also tell the story of the massacre's few survivors: seventeenchildren who witnessed the slaughter and eventually returned to Arkansas, where the ill-fated wagon train originated.
Vengeance Is Mine brings the hitherto untold story of this shameful episode in Mormon and Utah history to its dramatic conclusion.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 30, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781705091029
- File size: 503645 KB
- Duration: 17:29:15
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 30, 2023
Turley (In the Hands of the Lord), former assistant historian of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and Jones Brown, director of Signature Books, deliver a meticulous history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its decades-long consequences. In September 1857, members of the Latter-day Saint community of southern Utah killed more than 100 travelers en route from Arkansas to California, sparing only 17 children. Turley and Jones Brown tease out the tensions that incited the massacre—fears of federal invasion of the territory, general animosity between the Mormon community and the state—and recount the eventual murder trial of John D. Lee in 1874. Lee and others denied any involvement and blamed local Paiutes for the murders; meanwhile, federal authorities were hampered by a lack of funds. In the end, only Lee was convicted in a complicated series of trials that aimed to disenfranchise Mormons amid rising anti-polygamy sentiment. Though sometimes bogged down by dense, dry prose, the authors draw revelatory links between local effects of the massacre and national anxieties about religion and political volatility, giving readers a comprehensive, complex understanding of the era. This should become the definitive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its fallout.
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