Mormon Country

American Folkways

by Wallace Stegner, Richard W. Etulain (Introduction)

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Mormonism, Westerns, American History, Lds

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Reviews

[dianne b. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stegner writes, 82 years ago, exquisitely kindly about the prickly sect who chose to, attempted to, self isolate in the least fertile, least survivable, most ridiculously beautiful wilderness then attached to (but not part of) the United States so they could continue their strange theology and create their idea of Zion away from the irritating “Gentiles”.

The Great Salt Lake, and the tall red and orange towers of Zion, topped with fossils from an ancient ocean floor, Bryce Canyon and its magical hoodoos at 3000 meters, Joseph Smith’s communist ideas (the United Order of Enoch), and polygamy (of course) were all ingredients in this wacky brew that somehow survived the nineteenth century revivalism and millennialism that birthed hundreds of sects and utopian ideas in the “new” and enlarging USA. The Mormons, bless their hearts, lived and thrived.

The Mormons also birthed me - but I escaped early with only history and genealogy as scarification. Alhamdulillah!

"Court of the Patriarchs Zion National Park"

My maternal ancestors arrived with the earliest pioneers and were sent by Brigham Young to settle the Sevier Valley, remnants of the early homestead still available to me as I grew up, family still there. It’s much drier now and not productive, but still lovely in its way. Headstones we can trace back 8 generations to Sweden, Norway, Scotland. They had walked across the plains to dig a life out of rock in this place, create a village in a desert, and to share what they grew, on the strict orders of the Church.
I believe Stegner captures part of their motivation here:

“They were the technologically and spiritually unemployed, many of them, the economically stranded people of Europe’s back doors, to whom the Church offered both material and spiritual rejuvenation, a chance to own and cultivate a little farm, an opportunity to start over again…”

I long ago concluded that the Latter Day Saint (Mormon) Church was a cult, as I believe it fulfills all of the criteria. For instance:

“Persecution and hardship are an exceedingly effective trying ground…Throughout his career Brigham kept that firmly in mind; he fanned the hatred of the Gentiles, he fostered the sense of being surrounded and persecuted. It is a trick which modern prophets and saviors have found useful. Until people are down and out, and have someone to hate for their condition, they do not seem likely to cooperate for any common aim”.

So I can’t help a sort of perverse interest in Who Joins Cults? I watched a documentary called "Holy Hell" last night after finishing this book. Uniformly, eventual converts began their search with the goal of finding “something greater than myself”.
And in their search they consistently looked outward for guidance.
Clue one?

Why is this? Why don’t we listen to, look to, trust in, ourselves?
One woman trapped for decades, now on her own, asked:
“Who will take me dancing in the forest now? Singing in the ocean?”
I shouted at her (on the screen of my computer): “You will! Take yourself!”

Another commonality of cults is the eventual need for isolation brought on by persecution, or the illusion of persecution, so the need to run away and isolate from any nonbelievers. This, of course, gives the leader even more power, as then followers have less means of escape or support should their faith begin to falter.

The Mormons, in the Salt Lake Valley, being on the far side of the Wasatch, with the Great Basin deserts between you and the Pacific? Check.

Now it’s just you and the Lombardy poplars we planted everywhere, baby. Meet your sister wives.


Once Brigham Young had his flock isolated he set out methodically to settle Zion, to colonize the hell out of it.

“Brigham Young was no seer and revelator, but a practical leader, an organizer and colonizer of very great stature.”

In fact he was a “colonizer without equal in the history of America.”
In a desert no one wanted, he planted more than 350 towns in 30 years, when transportation was “fearfully difficult and expensive” and the nearest source of essential supplies was over 1000 miles away!

But Mormon pioneers dragging handcarts from Missouri over the plains and the Rockies was deadly and expensive and could only happen for 3 months a year. Brigham had plans for a simpler way to bring new Saints in than how my great grandmother arrived (paternal side, now). She landed in San Francisco in July 1846, onboard the Brooklyn led by the sketchy grifter Mormon elder Sam Brannan after a 7 month, rat infested sail from Boston, around Cape Horn, via Hawaii. Unfortunately they arrived too late to claim Yerba Buena for themselves, it had just been claimed by the US government, damn them. If only it was still Mexico…

But the Mormons did triple the population of San Francisco, and they did achieve the dubious goal of making it, for the first time, a majority white town. My great grandmother, Elizabeth Wallace Bird, having been born onboard, was the last survivor of the Brooklyn passengers. She returned to San Francisco in 1940 at 94 years of age to celebrate. She lived long enough for my father to know her, tell me stories about her, and grow to love her.



But she didn’t stay in San Francisco to grow up. Her mother died in childbirth and she was adopted by a family who left SF to head south to settle and (I was told) raise grapes in San Bernadino.
I always wondered why.

The answer was in this book and it was more brilliant Brigham colonizing:
Under his directives and plan, it was imperative that there be a simpler way for Saints to arrive from the east coast, and having studied the west he knew the mountain ranges and deserts. He set up San Bernadino (in Southern California) as an outfitting point for Saints journeying to Zion. It is where the east west mountains meet the north south mountains and it’s easy (relatively) to pass through heading east into the desert towards Las Vegas.

“The trip by wagon across the plains was difficult and dangerous, slow and expensive. Brigham conceived of a route by boat to Panama, across the Isthmus by whatever means could be made available, and by boat again up to San Diego to Salt Lake City was comparatively safe, and could be traveled at any time of the year.”
….
“For a time in 1846 and 1847 they had made San Francisco practically a Mormon town. By 1851 they had had more than five hundred of their number firmly planted in San Bernadino. And unless they were called in by specific Church order, they were the kind to stick.”

There is a delightful chapter about the creation of Lake Mead by the massive Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Stegner imagines what archaeologists might conclude when they find cultural artifacts buried under Lake Mead hundreds or thousands of years hence. The chapter is titled Mud over Lyonesse:

“Sometime a broken fragment of a plastic umbrella handle might overthrow scholarly reputations. One of the innumerable cast off dice from a Nevada gambling joint might arouse learned argument about whether it was an instrument for teaching numbers to the young or whether it had some ritualistic or cabalistic significance…”

But, what is wonderful in Stegner’s writing is the liminal space he suspended me within, the space I actually occupy: my deep love for individuals and memories of gorgeous places, log cabins and dribbling creeks in tiny villages not on any maps, being a wild child playing in Park City and finding an old miners cabin still filled with rusty tin cups and trash, learning how to “can” fresh strawberries, being a teen walking in surreal bright orange and red canyons and hot rock deserts, while holding a simultaneous deep loathing for a misogynist, absolutist, imagination-destroying, capitalist cult of a Church that brought my ancestors here, here, to This Place.

Stegner ends the Lake Mead chapter by noting that:

“There is nothing preserved in those ruins of the fervid hope of Heaven the Mormon farmer lived by; there is none of the human frailty, none of the fatigue or bad temper or the sweetness of the good hours, none of the laughter or the obedience or the loyalty or the stubbornness…”

But there’s more than just stories about Mormons. The chapter about Rafael Lopez - a lone wolf badman is absolutely incredible - I can’t believe it isn’t more famous. We read it out loud over dinner and laughed until our sides hurt. And, of course The Wild Bunch: Butch Cassidy (not his given name) was born a Mormon in Utah, but who can resist those God-given hiding places in Southwestern Utah?

I think this quote towards the end of the book captures why some of these chapters were the most engaging:

“The Mormons are not, as Mormons, a colorful people…The colorful episodes of Mormon history are likely to have been furnished by the apostates, by the Gentiles, by the cowpunchers and all the floating and reckless elements on the fringes of the region. A Mormon’s whole training incapacitates him for recklessness; adventurous as the pioneers were, bold as they were, indomitable as they were, they were adventurous and bold and indomitable in pack, on orders…”

A page later:

“Because the Mormons have never been an imaginative people; they never noticed much about the land they settled…In all that country you seldom find a house built to take advantage of the view, though the view is likely to be something tremendous.”

When my parents built their nouveau riche dream house in Orange County California in the sixties, it was all about the view. They built it on the top of the highest hill. During the day we saw Mt. Baldy out the front and Catalina Island out the side and back from flawless redwood decks that overlooked an avocado orchard. That was where we watched the Disneyland fireworks at night, too.

If only I’d known that was a sign.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner, writer about the American West, is famous mostly for his novel "Angle of Repose". This book is not famous, but it is worth reading. "Mormon Country" is a travelogue centered on the areas settled by the Mormons—basically Utah, of course, but also parts of Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico. It is not a book about Mormons, though they appear prominently; it is about the country, as it was in the 1930s. Stegner did not write this book to make a point. There is no ideological overlay, and Stegner is neither pushing nor denigrating Mormonism. He was not Mormon, but he respects them and their culture. "Mormon Country" draws a picture of the area and its history, as of the time of writing, and offers intriguing tales (many of which have modern postscripts).

The book is divided into a longer part covering Mormons and a shorter part covering non-Mormons, “Gentiles,” who lived in Mormon territory. Stegner sets the scene by describing in detail a ward house meeting in one of the innumerable small Mormon towns of the time (apparently Koosharem, Utah). His basic message is that Mormons have a unique bond of community, organized around actual participation, not passive sharing of culture from “movies or the radio.” The resulting “culture is a curious mixture of provincialism, parochialism, and cosmopolitanism.” The last comes from the requirement that Mormons engage in missionary work, as well as their successful aspirations to be a global religion (Stegner mentions that the Mormons, when he wrote, had eight temples; they now have 158, with one of the most recent opening two years ago down the road from my house). Critically, there are many young people involved, then and now, and they are fully integrated into the community’s life, largely through the vehicle of “Mutual Improvement Associations,” existing for both men and women. Stegner wrote in the past, but all these things, as far as I can tell, still apply to Mormons.

Stegner also describes other aspects of typical Mormon settlements, from widespread planting of Lombardy poplars to the use of what was originally a uniform platting system for Mormon towns, “like a medieval village, a collection of farm houses in the midst of cultivable land.” That Mormons gravitated to medieval forms is, I suspect, no accident. Of all American mass movements with proselytizing zeal that have had success, the Mormons are the only ones whose structures (it appears to me, not being an expert on Mormons) are tied to a pre-Enlightenment, Burkean time, where community, rather than individual personal gain, is the highest good. I have no idea whether such small Mormon towns still exist, in these days of internet and atomization, but if they do, they provide a model for what we should aspire to as a society.

The physical landscape is a major player in this book. Stegner loved the West, and it shows. (He also had an interest in Mormons—twenty years after this book, he wrote another book about Mormons, "The Gathering of Zion.") The Mormons modified the landscape, or at least the arable parts, and those modifications are also a focus. This includes both the successful and unsuccessful modifications—the Mormons, for example, did not have much luck in the mining industry, despite the richness of ores in this area, which Stegner chalks up to inadequate technology existing within the insular Mormon world. Interspersed with discussions of the physical landscape is the history of the recent human presence. Fascinating episodes are covered, such as the Deseret Alphabet (a failed attempt to create a new system of writing) and the Sons of Dan (a shadowy vigilante group, used as the armed wing of the early Mormon leadership, to an extent still debated today). Stegner also discusses variations within Mormonism, not so much of doctrine, but of degree—such as the town of Orderville, the most prominent example of a Mormon attempt to live completely communally, which, like all such experiments, ultimately failed. Many colorful characters appear, such as J. Golden Kimball, member of the First Council of the Seventy, who swore constantly from the pulpit. “All through his life his friends warned him that the Church might cut him off if he didn’t stop seasoning his tabernacle sermons with peppery talk. His answer was invariable: ‘They can’t cut me off,’ he squeaked. ‘I repent too damn fast!’ ”

The shorter second part of the book covers the Gentiles, including the explorer Jedediah Smith, killed young by Indians after being the first man to explore much of Mormon Country, and Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy (though Stegner gives his given name as George, in those days before the internet superseded, and erased, memory). The most interesting account is of Rafael Lopez, a miner at the Bingham Canyon copper mine, who in the town of Bingham (now swallowed by the mine) killed an acquaintance (named Juan Valdez—but I don’t think he hawked coffee), then killed five lawmen sent to bring him in, and disappeared into the mine, never being found even after the mine was smoked. He “faded into thin air.” In a fascinating footnote, after a little research, I learned that it is known today that Lopez, called “Red” Lopez, did escape, killing a total of thirty men over a life of crime, then fought in the Mexican Revolution, and was killed in a shootout with Texas Rangers in 1921. But Stegner could not have known that, since it was only years later, in 2003, that people realized the two men called Lopez were the same man. The story of Red Lopez is not the only part of the book with a postscript. For example, Stegner refers in passing to Whizzer White, a famous football player much later better known as a Supreme Court justice. And he writes of how barren Nevada is, and mentions Las Vegas briefly as a dead-end town, long before it became a famous attraction. It is strange to think, sometimes, that the 1930s are now nearly a hundred years ago, and of all that has passed since then.

One lesson of this book is that Mormon community, which has much in common with Rod Dreher’s famous “Benedict Option,” has costs as well as benefits. In today’s world, we all want what the Mormons have, but few want to give up their independence. Most of us, tutored in self-sufficiency and autonomy, believing that “every man’s house is his castle,” would be loath to pay the price. The best example of that is the Mormon custom of “block teachers” (today called “home teachers”), who are responsible for regularly visiting and sitting with each family in the ward, to “give aid or counsel, discuss religious and economic problems, rebuke the ungodly.” Stegner sees that, especially if the block teachers had “unbridled zeal,” this could be a problem. But on balance, he sees the teachers as “angels of mercy—the kind neighbor systematized and made efficient,” able to offer food, opportunities, and, most importantly, “the conviction that the Church cares about him, that he is among friends, that he is part of a great and good brotherhood.” I don’t want people nosing around my house any more than the next person, but an honest analysis suggests that this system, if everyone is doing it, offers more benefit than harm. And it is a clear way to regenerate the type of community that, as Robert Putnam has documented, has disappeared nearly entirely. There is a reason that Mormons to this day have the only robust sense of community left in America, and a reason their religion is growing. I suspect that if Dreher’s vision is to gain traction, it will be through an overt alliance among his Benedict Option communities, the Mormons, and probably orthodox Muslims and Jews. An odder grouping is harder to imagine, but I think that in the modern world, their common approach, and common needs for defense, will outweigh their differences.

It is important to remember, though, that despite supposed American tolerance of religious belief, and the guarantee of free exercise of religion, those who fall too far outside the mainstream of American thought will be always persecuted, with violence if necessary, to make them conform. With the Mormons, the major flash point was polygamy, and their solution was to move to largely unpopulated Mormon Country and make it flourish, and then to agree to abjure polygamy (though they did not change the theology—the dropping of polygamy was, and is, characterized as prudential, not theological). This should be a lesson for those Dreher-ite conservatives who think that they will be left alone to form communities of virtue, if they continue to oppose the new, non-Christian, religious beliefs of our ruling class. As Stegner says of Orderville, “the fact remained that Orderville existed under the laws of the United States, and in the midst of a society increasingly imitative of the world outside.” Since the Benedict Optionees believe in Christian orthodoxy, and since Christian orthodoxy is today, to the rulers of our Cthulhu State, far worse than Mormon polygamy was to the 1850s, they will not be left alone. For the Mormons, federal officers invaded their towns and homesteads to search for “cohabs”; for Dreher’s communities, federal officers will reduce any members to penury, invade to seize and remove children who are being taught the thought crime of Christian orthodoxy, especially in any matter involving supposed sexual autonomy, and, ultimately, take any action necessary to destroy the communities if they seem to be getting wider traction. When, soon enough, it is a crime to think wrongly, as opposed to what it is now, merely a civil disability, the only solution will be more guns and a new Sons of Dan, not just more community and potlucks.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Feisty Harriet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stegner spent a lot of time in Utah during his formative years, and his grasp of Mormon culture and idiosyncrasies while still respecting their faith is, frankly, refreshing. This was published in the early 1940's and while there have been some big changes in many aspects of Mormon culture since then as the LDS church has grown exponentially, some of the idiosyncrasies are now just bigger issues, and some have disappeared completely.

In addition to describing the people and culture of Utah, however, Stegner spends many chapters discussing the land, the settlement (small agricultural towns based on community and irrigation, not the stand-alone ranches of the Midwest), the working with the natural resources instead of exploiting them (Mormons did not mine, despite settling in mineral and oil rich country), history of native tribes and people, history of battles (actual and political) with the federal government in the early days of the Utah Territory, Spanish explorers, Butch Cassidy's outlaws, legends and stories from the Colorado Strip, dinosaur hunters, and the "colonizing" Mormons who settled from Idaho to Mexico, from the Rockies to the Sierra and even outposts at San Francisco, San Bernadino, and San Diego, California.

Mostly, this book just made me homesick. Stegner's descriptions of the wild places of the Wasatch Mountains and south-eastern Utah's Red Rock Country made me long desperately for home. Stegner's predictions for Utah have almost all came true, which was really interesting to read about.

[iosephvs bibliothecarivs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mormon Country, first published in 1942, is my first Stegner work and I quite enjoyed it. Being a jack-Mormon in Utah, but with a strong sense of my heritage and love for my state, I was excited to delve into this respected look at the Mormon West by an inside-outsider. I also wanted to read it around Utah's unique state holiday, Pioneer Day (celebrated annually on July 24), which I did. The book is a collection of mostly unrelated historical topics which help us to understand "Mormon Country", which can be loosely defined as Utah plus the parts of surrounding states that border it. The topics, divided into those about Mormons and those about non-Mormons, consisted of some I knew nothing about and others I had discovered before, but all the stories were told in an entertaining way that made them a joy to read. As I travel around the state in the future, I think I will take Mormon Country along and share the relevant chapters with my family. I can definitely say I am now better educated about my land and my people.

[Pat Settegast · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both an excellent reference guide to all things Desseret (everything from Brigham's alphabet to the gathering of Zion, with plenty in between on dinosaurs, resurrection cults, and lost persons) as well as a collection of masterful essays. It may very well be my favorite of Stegner's work, if only for the massive amount of highlighting and cross referencing I've done with this text. Not until my uncle gave me Mormon Country as a present did I realize what a rich land of symbols I had been living in. Any number of overlooked details of basin existance suddenly sprung to life with renewed importance as I pieced through these essays. Subtle, even vanishing details like the line of Lombardy poplars by an old field or the irrigation ditches lining the streets of villages or even the broad span of those same streets were brought to my attention with all the reverence of icons and gothic archetecture. Mormon Country is a kind of rubric for deciphering how Utah has become such a religiously significant state, and further why it appears to outsiders to still be a cultural backwater.

[Shellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seriously loved this book!
Originally published in 1942 this is a short but fairly comprehensive history of Utah and Mormons as viewed from an outsider. Mr. Stegner was never a Mormon and lived in Utah for a short time.
As a Mormon I found this little history to be, to be best of my knowledge, accurate. I also did not find it offensive.
The story-telling part was amusing and informative, and I found it very enjoyable.
His off-hand remarks were few and not completely out of line. They have been left out, but that would have denied his opinion which I didn't have a problem with. He was not overly critical and certainly I've heard worse about Utah and Mormons in recent years.
Given the time it was written he had access to what was then fairly current history, and if not odd certainly unique. I was thrilled to hear his version of the state of love and and call home. And by default that includes the religion I also love.

[Michael Andersen-Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is a vehemently anti-Mormon, left-wing, proudly gay man reading a book like "Mormon Country"? My ancestors were among the first converts to the Mormon Church. My paternal great great great grandparents knew Joseph Smith personally in the once Mormon Zion of Nauvoo, Ill., and they and their children and grandchildren followed Brigham Young to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Despite my antipathy to the modern Mormon Church, I have a strong urge to know and understand where my ancestors came from, the land they settled, and why they became Saints. The history of the early Church appeals to the radical in me. The book "Mormon Country" is a beautifully written and a fair and well-balanced portrayal of the majestic land my ancestors settled in the 19th Century. The contemporary Mormon Church repels me, but I find 19th and early 20th Century LDS history to be oddly compelling. This book helped me get a better idea of the land and the people who settled in "Mormon Country".

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this. Wallace Stegner who taught Wendell Berry, Ken Kesey, Sandra Day O'Connor, Edward Abbey and others writes about the land and people of Mormon Country (the area settled by my ancestors which includes Utah {obviously} and parts of Wyoming, New Mexico, Idaho, Nevada, California and Arizona, with a super interesting cameo from Hawaii). I've heard stories of many of the books topics (like the 3 Nephites wandering the earth until the second coming), but Stegner colored them up quite well and wrote about many things that were new to me (like the "god-king" of Hawaii with his letter of recommendation from Brigham Young). This is a love letter to the last great wilderness in the western world and its peculiar people.

[Maralise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mormon Country is not history, per se. It's not literature either. I think it pre-dated the 'creative non-fiction' title that seems so popular now. It reads like a series of short stories and it happens to be about a group of people and a landscape that I care deeply about. I loved the breadth of the writing if not the depth. I also loved the hearty assessment of a people from an outsider, but without the anger or resentment that comes from being an 'other.'

[Aleatha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book about western Mormon culture, history, and landscape, written by a non-Mormon author. This is the third book I've read by Wallace Stegner and I've loved them all. My kind of book.

[Christopher Angulo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a pleasure to read.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part history, part travelogue, part personal recollections, part biographical, ... but always, as you'd expect with Wallace Stegner, beautifully composed. Each chapter a discrete story. Some were lovely, many were loving, but others were stern and unflinching, and some were rather flat and disappointing. It's dated, of course -- it was written in the 40s. That is its strength, because Stegner recounts conversations with older people who'd been a part of events in the 1800s. It might handicap him a bit with modern audiences because modern (at least U.S.) sensibilities probably would not always tolerate his choice of vocabulary. But never mind that; I take it as it was written, and it was written smartly and sensibly and well. The writing date, again the 1940s, was more interesting because one knows (or can look up) subsequent events, to fill in the details, or check his predictions, and so forth. His chapter on Short Creek, for instance, is an interesting read, coming 11 years before the Short Creek Raid and long before the eventual incarceration of Warren Jeffs. His chapter on Rafael Lopez was fun, if for no other reason, then because he entertained the possibility that Lopez was still alive -- though in fact he'd been dead for nearly 20 years (shot by a Texas Ranger, though Texas and Utah did not connect the dots to Lopez until the 2000s). It's a great book to read with the Internet close to hand ... it offers so many wonderful rabbit holes for the curious. But it's a better book to read without the Internet, and without distractions, with a cup of tea, and a cat, and a blanket, because Stegner's writing is so careful. And in places it sings suddenly, whether because he's turned the perfect sentence or because he's tucked a thoughtful observation about the human condition into a paragraph about trees or rocks.

[Brittney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read aloud. I loved how he wrote about Mormonism with journalistic integrity but also with affection. Best chapter was about the poplars.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a born and raised native of "Mormon Country" I found this book interesting. Wallace Stegner was not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he lived in Utah for several years and knew and lived among many and so was quite familiar with them at that time. This book was published in 1943 so I found it interesting reading Stegner's perceptions of the geography, the people, and the culture at that point in time and then thinking about how things have changed in the decades since this book was written. I thought the book was quite well written and enjoyable.

I can relate to the author's sense of wonder and appreciation for the vastness, ruggedness, beauty, and at times desolateness of the desert and mountain landscapes of the lands that I call home. I feel similarly in many respects. I also enjoyed reading some of the vignettes of smaller places and stories in our history that I had never read about before.

I appreciated Stegner's tone of respect and in some ways admiration for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I appreciated that for the most part his descriptions of our beliefs and history were accurate. However, at times his explanations of our beliefs lacked the nuances of thorough understanding and were therefore somewhat inaccurate or incomplete. Still, as far as explanations of our beliefs from someone who isn't a member and well schooled in our doctrine go, he was quite fair and mostly accurate, which I appreciated. Sometimes his word choice made me cringe a little, like places where he describes the behavior of members of the church as "fanatical" or "zealous" where I or another member of the church probably would have said "faithful," "committed," or "devout" instead. The author obviously doesn't agree with many of our beliefs, but he respects and admires some of the fruits of our lived religion.

One thing about Stegner's comments about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that somewhat puzzled me is a few places where he described church leaders/the church as an institution as being "authoritarian" and "manipulative" in getting members to comply with church standards of behavior, etc. I think I can understand part of where an accusation like that may come from. For example, during the years when the church and members thereof were by far most dominant social, political, and religious force in most communities in the intermountain west, of course church standards and teachings are going to have a lot of influence on society, the same as any majority opinion would have a lot of influence in any democratic society. So if non-members were a minority in a town with a lot of members, they probably would feel like the church and its members had too much influence in shaping society in ways they wouldn't agree with. However, I don't really think that that kind of thing qualifies as "authoritarian" or "manipulative" so much as "relatively normal social and political influence in a democratic society where there is a clear majority."

Regarding Stegner's speaking of church leaders as authoritarian, I can see a bit where that idea comes from as well. While it is true that Brigham Young had by far the most authoritarian leadership style of any President of the Church in church history to date (and to a 21st century member of the church Brigham's bold, somewhat aggressive, authoritarian style of leadership would be a stark contrast from the type of leadership we experience and expect in the church today), the idea that the church as whole forces or manipulates its members to live a certain way is to me laughable and demonstrably false. There are so many members on the records of the church who don't live up to the standards of the church that anyone who supposes that we actually force or manipulate people to live the way we teach is simply ignorant of the way things actually are in the church. To paraphrase Joseph Smith, we "teach correct principles, and the people govern themselves." And a good many people (in the church, as well as out) govern themselves poorly. Every member of the church knows that. No one in the church (except maybe your mother) forces you to attend church, pay tithing, serve a mission, keep the Word of Wisdom, etc. Sure, if you live in a family or community full of faithful members that do those things there is going to be some social pressure to do those things, but that is hardly institutional authoritarian force or cult-like brainwashing or manipulation. Thousands of people from such families and communities don't live church standards, and nobody is arrested or persecuted or shunned; there is no violence or retaliation against them. In decades of life in the church I have never heard a church leader or member teach anything other than love for God, love for your neighbor, and tolerance, kindness, and respect for wayward members and people not of our faith. If a church member decides to stop living the commandments there is a good chance their mother will tell them how disappointed she is and they will probably feel some guilt and/or shame about it, but she will keep loving them anyway. Compared to a TRULY authoritarian political regime (like the totalitarian USSR) or religion (like the violence-enforced laws of some radical strains of Islam) the assertion that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is authoritarian or manipulative is quite silly by comparison. That is why some of Stegner's comments about that puzzled me. If I could have sat down and talked with the man I would have asked what he meant by that and if he could give me some examples of the kinds of behavior he sees as being authoritarian or manipulative. I just don't understand that characterization of the church as an institution or its leaders and members. It is totally alien to my experience (although I'm also sure there are individual members of the church who have said and done stupid and wrong things that could be characterized that way, but it certainly isn't the norm among us generally in this century, and I rather doubt it was in the last couple centuries as well).

All in all, an interesting book that I enjoyed reading. I liked reading the perspective of someone familiar with my homeland and the people of my faith but who nevertheless had an outside perspective. It was just interesting seeing how our land, church, history, and people are perceived by another person who actually had some knowledge and experience with the subject.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this! This is a book of essays about the land and people of "Mormon Country," today known more commonly as the intermountain west. As a non-LDS resident of Utah, Stegner brings an affectionate outsider's perspective to the unique and often quirky character of the small towns originally settled by the Mormon pioneers. Some of the essays focus on the people and communities, some focus on the land, and some even focus on the "Gentile" (non-LDS) communities and people. It was really interesting to read a non-LDS perspective on some of the historical events that happened in Utah's early history. I also couldn't help but marvel at how much Utah has changed. Stegner talks about small country towns, and while those still exist in Utah, many of the small towns that once dotted the Salt Lake and Utah valleys have now morphed into a long slash of highly-populated suburban sprawl.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read some of Wallace Stegner's novels and have enjoyed his writing style, so picked up this book with two ends in mind: 1) I wanted to read what was supposedly the first positive approach to the Mormons written by a non-Mormon, and 2) I wanted to find that quote occasionally referenced in General Conference about how the Mormon pioneers were stalwart, but the Mormon women were amazing. My first end was successful. By and large, Stegner achieves fairness. His work needs some updating, but he looks both ways in his descriptions and makes some interesting connections between economic trends, landscape, social interaction and faith. The second end I completely failed in. I can't find that quote anywhere. Maybe he wrote another book about the Mormons? Dale, what are your thoughts??

[GeekChick · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are at all curious about the TRUE history of the Mormons in the West,then this is the book for you!!!

As always, Stegner tells a masterful tale, about how/why the Mormons chose this horrid, forbidding land. And yet, if you are hoping for a tale based on a particular suite of characters, you will be disappointed. You must be willing to do a certain amount of wandering from one topic to the next-- yet even so, Stegner does this seamlessly.

I would've devoured this book already, but I personally needed a break from non-fiction.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mormon Country was referred to often during my high school psychology class and again in a sociology class at the "U", my appetite was whetted, and the book was devoured. I learned much about my Mormon culture and became a devotee of Wallace Stegner---who played tennis on the courts of Victory Playground while I was going down the slippery-slide, taught at the U of U, and grew-up in the Liberty Park area.

[Loreen ☕️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the place I call home and the people that I know. I read it when I was living far from Mormon Country and it made me cry with with homesickness. He describes the land, the people, and the culture of this place beautifully. The next time I am home I will "borrow" this book from mom so I can read it whenever I get homesick.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book during a period when I was fascinated with Mormonism. It's a light, fun read about Utah and the Mormons who live there, written in episodic style at a very early stage in Stegner's career.

[Marty Reeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of my non-fiction reading nowadays harks back to my experience in reading Irving Stone’s Men to Match My Mountains. It changed the way that I saw the physical world around me and my connection to the generations that came before me in a way that mustered respect for the work they put into making my existence more than just survivable--a luxury they did not have.

Mormon Country by Wallace Stegner feels like a spin-off novel from Men to Match My Mountains. Both are written by two authors of the same generation and similar, flowing, literary, non-fiction styles. Both authors also were first known for their excellent, award-winning fiction writing. Both have a healthy respect for the connection between the land and the people/cultures inhabiting it. Has anyone seen either of them in the same room at the same time?

Regardless, Mormon Country is a fairly just look at the brutal landscape of the intermountain west and the only kind of religious people who would stand a chance at domesticating it in such an effective manner. While Stegner is a “gentile” among the Mormons, he shows a healthy respect for their hardscrabble culture and communitarian approach to colonization. His skepticism of their theology is not too carefully disguised and he paints Brigham Young, alternately, as a fierce dictator and sincere advocate to his faith. I, for one, tire of the accusations of theocracy in early Utah history. While there is plenty on the surface that supports such a designation, those same historians must need recognize that Brigham attempted to put forth plenty of programs that his “blind adherents” simply had no stomach for, which caused those programs to shrivel and die or never get off the ground at all. Any time early Utahns followed dictates from the Beehive House, it came only after strong campaigning as a means of uniting them in their purpose. That sounds fairly democratic to me and seems to show that some historians are ignorant to the power of the idea as opposed to the leader who represents said idea.

Still, Stegner may not hide his cynicism of some Mormon tenets and leadership, but on the whole his tolerance and esteem for the fruits of their labor are a great example of the kind of perspective often lacking in increasingly divisive times. In fact, I was a bit surprised at his glossing over of the Mountain Meadows Massacre by demuring that other works had plenty of information on that aspect of Utah history. While true, I also think that the horrific events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre deserve to be shown in their entirety with full and just criticisms as to the perpetrators of the tragedy and the handling of it by the Church afterwards--though within the context that led to it. (Another example of Brigham’s looser-than-believed hold on his people. Cynics want to have Brigham be both the tyrant and the failed co-opter, industrialist, communist … but they can’t have it both ways. Reason would suggest that it was a united faith that held them together and that Brigham’s dynamic personality and personal conviction succeeded only as far as it merged with the combined beliefs of the people that he led.)

The second part of the book touch up on the some of the more influential gentiles in the intermountain west’s history. These have their interesting facets as well, though they are, by nature, far more individualized than the single-purpose mass of Mormons from the first part. Everett Ruess, Rafael Lopez, Jedediah Smith, Butch Cassidy: these are all fascinating characters who earned their place in Mormon Country history (a couple of them are left off as unsolved riddles, which, since Stegner’s writing, have been either resolved or partially resolved). Even among the Mormons, Stegner’s singling out of J. Golden Kimball and Jessie Knight are notable and indicative of both the oft-forgotten diversity and connecting creed of the Mormon faith.

Mormon Country is readable and fairly accurate. It is not a textbook, but it does provide plenty of information. More than that, it provides a connection between the physical landscape and the spiritual tone of the people inhabiting it. It is not aggressive enough or structured meticulously enough to be a quintessential historical text … but it is personal enough and sympathetic enough to be worth the read, whether or not you have connections to the region or religion.

[T.J. Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I have so much to say about "Mormon Country" and yet also somehow nothing to say. Published in 1942, the book is a collection of essays, primarily about Mormon history of the 1850s - early 1900s, with a few vignettes that advance up to the 1940s. The writing is beautiful (I mean, it's Stegner, come on!), and I liked the general tone of the book - it felt warm, friendly, interested. Stegner is aware of the difficulties and oddities of Mormon history and culture without sensationalizing them or giving the impression of rubber necking. This is not a page-turner by any means, but I enjoyed it, slowly and tranquilly, reading an essay at a time. I learned some new things and met some new historical figures. (I kept my phone near me to do my own research about people and incidents he introduced like the Mountain Meadows Massacre, J. Golden Kimball, Earl Douglass, and Marie Ogden. Oh, and it was fascinating to hear about the origins of the Short Creek community, now a base of Fundamentalist LDS members). I literally just realized while flipping through the book to write this review that "Mormon Country" is part of a series edited by Erskine Caldwell that includes many other entries like "Short Grass Country" (Stanley Vestal) and "Palmetto Country" (Stetson Kennedy). Interesting. Anyhow, if you love Wallace Stegner and are even remotely interested in LDS history, then you will probably enjoy this book.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a faithful reader (and collector) of Wallace Stegner for many years, but limited mostly to his novels. Because I had recently read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, which quotes Stegner extensively, I went into my library and grabbecd this 1942 book by Stegner, "Mormon Country," which is one in the American Folkways Series, edited by Erskine Caldwell. WOW, I'M GLAD I DID. Stegner is appropriately tough on the Mormons, but remarkably kind as well - a difficult line to tread. As much as I liked the part of the book (the majority obviously), I actually the liked the last part of the book about the "Gentiles (non-Mormons) in Mormon Country - great tales about the strange people who historically tried to settle in this tough country. Very fun reading. I recommend it. P.S. My copy is inscribed by Stegner to a Waldo Ruess (a deceased Santa Barbaran) and makes reference to a section in his book about Everett Ruess (I wonder if he was a relative).

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book. However, it only partially fulfilled my undefined expectations. I liked how each chapter is a stand-alone essay. It made it easy to pick up the book in between other reads. Yet, the book lacks continuity between chapters. Stegner divided the book into two parts: Mormon settlers and non-Mormon settlers. The second part held up. However, the first part needs something else to unite the stories.

Nonetheless, I appreciated learning about Utah state history from a different point of view.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is full of rich detail that covers every aspect of the Mormon west that you could think of. However, I had a difficult time following along, due to the sort of unorganized structure of the book. There is no true rationale linking one Chapter to the next. Further, the style of writing itself varies dramatically inter- and intra-chapter, with some chapters reading like a history book, some chapters reading like a biography, and some chapters reading like a fictionalized account. Just a bit too disjointed for me to find this an enjoyable read. Albeit, it was very informative.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner is my favorite writer. I am always so proud that he grew up in my neighborhood, attended East High, graduated from the University of Utah, and won the Pulitzer Prize. This book was written in 1942 (I picked it up at the gift shop in Snow Canyon), so this is the old Utah where I grew up and I love these old, quirky stories. But Wallace Stegner also has some insight into the future, and it does ring true.

[Jeremy Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy and informative read. I grew up in Utah and it refreshing to hear about Orderville, Mountain Meadow, etc… from a “Gentile” prospective. This book was surprisingly fair the the Mormons and gave credit where credit was due. The last 2-3 pages were prophetic in calling exactly what would happen to Mormon society when tourism became big business in Utah and the saints were unwittingly exposed to the rest of the world. A whole new set of values. Lol!!

[Daniel Toujours · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stegner was a bit "all over the place" with his narrative, as always, but his love of his state (he was living there at the time) and the history he presented was inspiring and fun to read. Although he is not a Mormon (neither am I), his admiration for his fellow statesmen who are came through. I liked how he said Salt Lake City is the classic Western city, such a bold statement with which I'm sometimes inclined to agree.

[Lynette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty fascinating read through some of the more obscure facets of the "Mormon Country" - the land, the people, some of the history, etc. It required a bit of "catch-up" research since it was written in the early 1940s more-or-less news reporting style, so is clearly out of date; but very interesting.