THE GIANT JOSHUA

I imagine that most people who read Vardis Fisher's Children of God were curious about what happened next to the Mormons, how those who were thrust out of Salt Lake City fared in their new environments, how the women stood up under the fire of martyrdom for their faith, particularly women who bore the stigma of being plural wives. Here is the book for that market. It is a story of a handful of pioneers who left Salt Lake City to found a mission in the southern part of the state, the city of St. George on the Virgin River. It is the story of a courageous struggle against fearful odds, of river in flood destroying the gains of months, of plague and pestilence and famine, of persecution and attack first from opportunists seeking to reap where others had sown, then from an aroused and ignorant government. But particularly it is the story of plural marriage and a psychological study of one woman, a third wife, who is a rebel and non-conformer to whom the penalties of polygamy always outweighed the strength of her beliefs. An intimate and understanding picture of the life and its effect on the disciples. A saga of twenty five years in a facet of American development. The author is a 1938 Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship winner.