Vengeance Is Mine

Reviews / Votes

This haunting, exhaustively-researched account stands as the definitive study of the long afterlife of the Mountain Meadows massacre. * Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Washington University in St. Louis * Vengeance is Mine is a riveting account of how justice was pursued and evaded during an era of national transformation. With moving prose and a brisk narrative, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown's tale reveals much about both nineteenth century Latter-day Saints as well as the American nation against whom they nearly waged war. * Benjamin E. Park, author of Kingdom of Nauvoo * A harsh, painful story of the tragic aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre reconstructed from a decades-long investigation of the sources, Vengeance Is Mine is an unflinching account of investigation, cover up, and suffering. Turley and Brown have made startling discoveries that put the story in a new light without relieving the perpetrators of guilt. A complex, enthralling historical narrative. * Richard Lyman Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling * This impeccably researched and eloquent book tells a story about crime and punishment in a western territory in the years immediately before and after the Civil War. It is a story about the entanglement of local and national politics, about religious zeal and bigotry, and about barriers to achieving justice in a bitterly polarized society. It is a story for today. * Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 * In Vengeance Is Mine, Brown and Turley clarify and fill in the narrative spaces in the aftermath of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. Using legal transcripts and other primary documents, they unravel the tale of how American Indians were blamed and then used to deflect attention from the principal orchestrators of unimaginable violence. This story reflects events in Mormon history while contextualizing religious and systemic racial attitudes of the nineteenth-century American West. This is a book not to miss. * P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo), co-editor of Essays on American Indian and Mormon History * Based upon years of extensive research, Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a masterpiece that examines not only the catalysts and culmination but also the consequences of one of the most infamous episodes of both Latter-day Saint and Western U.S. history-the Mountain Meadows Massacre...Learning the hard lessons of the past will help us make a better future for ourselves and others. To that end, I am pleased to highly recommend Vengeance is Mine. Who should read it? Everyone! If you are unsure whether you should buy it, do yourself a favor and do it. Read it, weep over it, wrestle with it, and I believe you will be a better person-one more genuine, merciful, tolerant, and thoughtful-by the end. * Sam Mitchell, Association of Mormon Letters * Turley and Brown have accomplished a remarkable feat in capturing so much primary source material and delivering a highly readable text that has lessons for all of us. If you end up finding yourself weeping or not being able to sleep, then the authors have accomplished what they set out to do, making you feel for this senseless tragedy. Vengeance is Mine is worthy of our concentrated attention. * Kevin Folkman, Association of Mormon Letters * Vengeance Is Mine does what any sequel does best: expands what is presented in the first iteration, deepens the audience's understanding of what is being presented, and concludes threads considered in the first text. Vengeance Is Mine connects readers more to one of the main figures in the massacre-John D. Lee-expanding his narrative and outlining the effect his trial had on not only him and his family but on American politics, the treatment of Latter-day Saints, and the Church that nestled itself in the Salt Lake Valley. Because it is both a good standalone and an excellent sequel, I recommend readers taking either path when reading: taking up the first book; if they are interested in a deep dive into the massacre, or reading this text on its own, since it provides the same main points that the first book does. * Adam McLain, Association for Mormon Letters * This is a book worth reading. * Amanda Ray, Association for Mormon Letters * I would say that anyone connected to Latter-day Saint studies should have this book on their bookshelf by the end of the year-it is no exaggeration to say that all historical studies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre converge in Vengeance is Mine. * Greg Seppi, Association for Mormon Letters * Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a stunning achievement... Brown and Turley's book is a phenomenal, breathtaking step toward communal learning. * Conor Hilton, Association for Mormon Letters * I would say that anyone connected to Latter-day Saint studies should have this book on their bookshelf by the end of the year-it is no exaggeration to say that all historical studies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre converge in Vengeance is Mine. * Greg Seppi, Association for Mormon Letters * Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a stunning achievement... Brown and Turley's book is a phenomenal, breathtaking step toward communal learning. * Conor Hilton, Association for Mormon Letters * In addition to providing the definitive narrative of the legal wrangling that followed the massacre and their useful demolition of several myths, the great work Turley and Brown do here is their contextualization of the massacre's investigation in the politics of the nation and the Utah territory. * Matthew Bowman, Nova Religio vol 27.2 * This is a superb treatment of a massacre that has unfairly blackened the Latter-day Saints for more than a century. Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. * Choice * Turley and Brown have given us a well-researched, well-reasoned, and well-written text on a massacre that has unfairly blackened the entire Latterday Saint people for more than a century and three score years. * The Journal of Mormon History * It must be stated that Turley and Brown completed in this book the kind of scholarship that could scarcely be dreamt of, let alone produced, even a generation ago. It is well done "hard history," and for Utah, it is a much-needed healing history. * Brad Westwood, Utah Historical Quarterly * The wonder of this book, in many ways, is in its narrative restraint. After so many years of self-serving accounts of the massacre, beginning with those published at the time, what the authors offer instead is something like a truth and reconciliation commission report. Finally, after a century and a half, this book makes it possible to begin to look at what happened after the massacre and why. In other words, this book is the beginning rather than the end of a conversation about what American justice for these atrocities might look like. * Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Mormon Studies Review * Turley and Brown's book walks readers through a day-by-day accounting of the massacre's aftermath, relying on direct quotations from a wide range of primary sources. The result is a granular historical narrative that follows primary actors around as they try to understand, hide, and justify the massacre. The book is organized in seven sections, each subdivided into shorter chapters, and follows the sources from the immediate aftermath of the massacre through John D. Lee's execution. * Brandi Denison, Journal of the American Academy of Religion * Vengeance Is Mine is an exceptional book that serves as a valuable contribution to the history of Mormonism andUtah. The authors' openness and depth of research is remarkable and presents a clear and thorough account of one of the most shameful events in Latter-day Saint history. * Chad Lawrence Nielsen, A Journal of Mormon Thought *