By far the best and most complete account of the incident in print—and sure to cause a stir in Salt Lake City and beyond.
A superbly crafted, blood-soaked tale of “the largest civilian atrocity to occur on American soil” until the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
The Mormons had not been in Utah long, writes Mormon-descended journalist Denton (The Money and the Power, 2001), when dark warnings swept across the countryside that the “Gentiles” beyond were bent on continuing the persecution that had led to church founder Joseph Smith’s murder in Illinois in 1844. Determined to remain independent of the US and to keep outsiders away, leader Brigham Young let it be known through his lieutenants that any immigrant wagon train that crossed into Utah would be “used up”—“a euphemism,” Denton writes, that “all Mormons understood to mean slaughtered.” In 1857, one such train, bound for California, did make its way across Utah; comprising hundreds of cattle and a couple hundred men, women, and children, carrying finery and gold along with the usual supplies, it had nearly crossed into what is now Nevada when a party of Mormon militiamen, disguised as Ute Indians, attacked it and killed all but some 20 children under the age of eight, “young enough to be considered ‘innocent blood’ in the Mormon faith.” When federal troops arrived at the scene of what came to be called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, they found a field two miles long in which “the skulls and bones of those who had suffered” lay scattered. Young disavowed all knowledge of the action, though, under pressure from the authorities, he eventually ordered its organizer, John D. Lee, to surrender; Lee was executed, though he predicted beforehand that Young would die within a year as expiation for the crime. Young indeed died, writes Denton, perhaps poisoned by Lee’s sons, and the Mormon church has busily tried to hush up the massacre ever since—and, Denton writes, tried to acquire the site of the crime from the federal government as recently as 2000, presumably to keep visitors away.
By far the best and most complete account of the incident in print—and sure to cause a stir in Salt Lake City and beyond.Pub Date: June 25, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41208-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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