After 14 years, a new book by Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown is finally available: 'Vengeance is Mine; The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its Aftermath.'
SALT LAKE CITY — Fourteen years, 100 drafts, 180,000 words and many nightmares later, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown finally have a Memorial Day weekend to themselves.
Brown and Turley are fine writers, but they are historians first. They didn't spend the last 14 years gazing out the window, stuck in writer's block. They spent it pouring over mountains of journals, newspaper articles, trial transcripts and other historical records, personally traveling to virtually every place mentioned in the book for authenticity's sake, and over-writing like they were getting paid by the word .
Barbara Jones Brown and Richard Turley, co-authors of “Vengeance is Mine,” pose for a portrait outside of the Beehive House in Salt Lake City on May 12. The opening scene of their book takes place where they are standing, in front of the Beehive House. But the picture painted of the territory of Utah's early days doesn't absolve the church president of fostering an extreme us-versus-them environment. He had his reasons. An army — a U.S. Army — was on its way to occupy Utah Territory and put down a rebellion the Latter-day Saints didn't see as a rebellion.
Through their own quotes, via their letters and journals, the massacre's participants — though most escaped justice in their lifetimes — end up convicting themselves in the book. Although no one confesses. Viewed nearly 200 years later, that's the most unsettling vibe: men justifying of what amounted to cold-blooded murder.
"One of the great lessons I hope people will take from this is asking themselves in the mirror, 'What would I do under similar circumstances?' In our polarized world where people have a tendency to very quickly move to extremism, can we be honest with ourselves and ask, 'Do I do that? Am I judging people wrongly to the point that I reach a frustration with them that I might even want to harm them...
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