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Utah-related reading titles anyone?

15 years ago

I will be visiting Utah (and probably HQing in Salt Lake City) at the end of the summer, and am interested in reading some Utah-related titles.

The only one I can think of is Under the Banner of Heaven by Krakauer, but surely there must be others that you know of?

Any ideas? Fiction or non-fiction - nearly anything will work...

Thanks

liz

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Comments (12)

phaedosia
15 years ago
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff is pretty good. It alternates between a modern-day mystery and historical fiction passages concerning a polygamist family.
rosefolly
15 years ago
Two Zane Grey novels come to mind, The Rainbow Trail and Riders of the Purple Sage. I read them long ago in my teens.

Rosefolly
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netla
15 years ago
I enjoyed Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey. It's about his life as a park ranger in Arches National Monument (which is now a national park) and is full of observations on people and nature.
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15 years ago
SALT: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
lemonhead101
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks... These are great to start with...

Another one I thought of is Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston (the climber who was forced to cut his right arm off with a dull knife)... I think he was from Colorado, but it happened in Utah.
lemonhead101
Original Author
15 years ago
And the book by Elizabeth Smart who was kidnapped by a Mormon Fundamentalist (who was also a complete and utter nutjob and thought he was the next leader guy for the church...)

Karakuer's book Under the Banner of Heaven is really interesting. I had no idea that the Books of Mormons had the history it did, nor that it said that Jesus visited America. (Must have missed that lesson somewhere...) :-)
J C
15 years ago
If you go to Amazon and put "Wallace Stegner Utah" in the search box, a long list of fiction and nonfiction will come up. Anything by Stegner is worth reading IMHO. (We discussed his Angle of Repose a few years ago.)
lemonhead101
Original Author
15 years ago
I love Stegner... Great suggestion, Siobhan! Thanks.
friedag
15 years ago
Siobhan beat me to it in suggesting Wallace Stegner, especially his Mormon Country which I remember as a fascinating collection of essays, anecdotes, and stories. Also, there's his A Gathering of Zion. But it was some forty years ago that I read them and I don't know how they hold up.

If you are at all interested in America's other infamous 9/11, I think The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks and Sally Denton's American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 are both enlightening.

Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders by Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts is fascinating if you like true crime. I recall that some of the things revealed about LDS church history seemed really bizarre and not at all pleasing to the church bigwigs.

Of course, if you want to bone up on the LDS, you could read Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?, but it would probably be best to do it either before you go or after you get back home. In my experience, it is impolitic to have it in view in Utah. :-(

Liz, you mentioned reading Under the Banner of Heaven, so maybe you can help me. I am trying to recall the title of a book by one of the many daughters of the patriarch living down on the Utah/Arizona line. Krakauer described this man in UtBoH (quite amusingly, as I recall). If I could just get the right surname of this man, I could probably find the book that seemed to me to be titled something like Deadly Kinfolk; but I don't get any hits at Amazon with that, so it must be something else.
J C
15 years ago
Is the surname Jeffs? That is a very common name in the polygamy crowd for the obvious reason. Warren Jeffs is an infamous polygamist. You could try a search at Amazon like "Mormon Jeffs." Even if that is not the name, it might bring up something that rings a bell.

I have way too much useless information knocking around in my brain!
lemonhead101
Original Author
15 years ago
Frieda - One of the main characters is one of a set of brothers with the last name Lafferty... Does that help?
ginny12
15 years ago
Another vote for Desert Solitaire. It is a classic of landscape literature and very personal as well. I bought and read it when we were in Utah visiting the national parks some years ago. What country!

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