Mormon Country (Second Edition) [Paperback]

Wallace Stegner (Author), Richard W. Etulain (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

Where others saw only sage, a salt lake, and a great desert, the Mormons saw their “lovely Deseret,” a land of lilacs, honeycombs, poplars, and fruit trees. Unwelcome in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, they migrated to the dry lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada to establish Mormon country, a wasteland made green. Like the land the Mormons settled, their habits stood in stark contrast to the frenzied recklessness of the American West. Opposed to the often prodigal individualism of the West, Mormons lived in closely knit – some say ironclad – communities. The story of Mormon country is one of self-sacrifice and labor spent in the search for an ideal in the most forbidding territory of the American West. Richard W. Etulain provides a new introduction to this edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stegner’s book makes excellent reading and is also solidly based. . . . His residence of fifteen years in the region he is describing allows him to mingle ease with authority.”—New York Times

(New York Times )

“Stegner combines a great amount of information and lively comment with fine description of one of the most beautiful and least known regions of the United States.”—Boston Globe

(Boston Globe )

From the Inside Flap

"Stegner’s book makes excellent reading and is also solidly based. . . . His residence of fifteen years in the region he is describing allows him to mingle ease with authority."—New York Times.

"Stegner combines a great amount of information and lively comment with fine description of one of the most beautiful and least known regions of the United States."—Boston Globe.

Where others saw only sage, a salt lake, and a great desert, the Mormons saw their "lovely Deseret," a land of lilacs, honeycombs, poplars, and fruit trees. Unwelcome in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, they migrated to the dry lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada to establish Mormon country, a wasteland made green. Like the land the Mormons settled, their habits stood in stark contrast to the frenzied recklessness of the American West. Opposed to the often prodigal individualism of the West, Mormons lived in closely knit—some say ironclad—communities. The story of Mormon country is one of self-sacrifice and labor spent in the search for an ideal in the most forbidding territory of the American West. Richard W. Etulain provides a new introduction to this edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 362 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books; 2 edition (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803293054
• ISBN-13: 978-0803293052
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Neat and electic collection of essays, June 6, 2001

By 

"maguzza" (eastern United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mormon Country (Paperback)

This book consists of a collection of 28 beautifully-written essays that focus on Mormon life and the wide range of Gentiles who lived in Mormon country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stegner has made a broad range of topics fascinating: the basics of life in a Mormon community; the avid converts who moved to Utah from Europe and Hawaii; the notorious Mountain Meadows massacre; the bizarre Deseret Alphabet; the story of Short Creek, AZ, where a polygamist community, protected from the law by geography, flourished briefly in the early 20th century; the wild mining towns; Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch; John Wesley Powell's river explorations; a paleontologist who devoted his life to dinosaur hunting in the desert; and the story of Everett Ruess, who mysteriously disappeared in the desert.

Stegner, a Gentile, seems to have considerable affection for the Mormons and their accomplishments as well as the ruggedly beautiful landscape of Utah. Although the book was originally published in 1942, it is still fascinating reading for anybody traveling around or living in Mormon country who would like not only a better understanding of the history and culture of the people who managed to tame a desert that most settlers only grudgingly trudged through on their way to greener points much further west, but of the many others attracted to that same desert for fortune-making, exploration, crime, science, and glorious solitude.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read and interesting, October 6, 2005

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mormon Country (Second Edition) (Paperback)

This book consists of several essays that address various facets of Mormon history and Mormon culture, especially in the West and in Utah, though many of the things Stegner writes about aren't Mormon at all but just take place in predominantly Mormon areas.
The author touches on the interesting Deseret alphabet--a bizarre, phonetic alphabet that Mormon leader Brigham Young tried to get all Mormons to learn--on missing artist-explorer Everett Ruess, on the settlements along the Colorado River, and on the effects Mormon culture had on local Indian tribes.
Stegner seems to really like and admire the Mormons, though he was never one himself, and his book is almost always fair, and at times even loving, to them.
This is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in these parts of the West, particularly in Utah and the Colorado Plateau. It's also well indexed and can be easily used as a reference. It's one of Stegner's best, for sure.

23 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Easy to Digest Anecdotal History of "Mormon Country", October 9, 2003

By 

S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mormon Country (Second Edition) (Paperback)

This book is an easy to read collection of essays and stories about the people and places in "Mormon Country". Stegner has one section of the book that deals exclusively with the Mormons and a second section that focuses in on the "Gentiles", which the name the Mormons give to non-Mormons.

This is the fourth book I've read in recent months dealing with Mormonism (others: Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven", Jack Earley's "Prophet of Death", and Fawn Brodie's excellent biography of Joseph Smith, "No Man Knows My History"). I decided to read this book because it was written by Wallace Stegner and because it seemed to me to be a less sensaionalistic and lurid account of Mormon life (both Banner of Heaven and Prophet of Death dealt with Mormonism and violent crime).

I was not dissapointed, although I can't say that I was particularly impressed, either.

This book takes the form of 28 little stories. As you would expect, some are great and some are merely so-so. I felt like the book served as a good survey of "Mormon Country". Stories like "Arcadian Village", which describes the last gasp of Mormon collectivism and "Chief of the Islands of the Scene", which describes the conversion efforts of Walter Gibson in Hawaii, illuminate aspects of Mormon history that had heretofore escaped me.

Because the book itself was written in the 40's, many of the interviews Stegner conducted consisted of "old timers" talking about events from the late 1800's and early 1900's. This gives the book a "living history" quality that is, in my opinion, it's most outstanding attribute.

Stegner is certainly sympathetic to Mormon society. His story "the Fossil Remains of an Idea", which is a genial account of polygamy in Short Creek (now Colorado City), was shocking in its good natured attitude towards polygamy. That is about the ONLY thing which can be said to be "shocking" about this book.

This is a good background resource for readers interested in pursuing self-study of Mormon society.