Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath
New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. First edition. Hardcover. SIGNED. 501pp. Octavo [24.5cm]. 1/4 blue paper over gray boards. Title stamped in silver on spine. New / New. Item #64524
ISBN: 9780195397857
Signed by the authors.
The first edition has a number of points of issue quickly corrected with the second edition printing. These include a lower contrast dust jacket illustration, misalignment of the cartographic endpaper design (resulting in text obscured by hinge and 1/2cm of missing content), and an odd layout of chapter headers. First edition is not stated.
"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 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. And 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 was dying, more than sixty years after the massacre.
Turley and Brown also tell the story of the massacre's few survivors: seventeen children who witnessed the slaughter and eventually returned to Arkansas, where the ill-fated wagon train originated."
Price: $34.99