Red Water

Being somewhat of an old west buff and having visited the meadow mountain monument a few years ago I bought this book expecting it to be a story of the events surrounding the massacre. I was pleasantly surprised that the story had much more depth than that. The story covers the twenty year interim between the actual event and the execution of John D. Lee the only member of the "Danites" to be tried and convicted in the massacre, told from the viewpoint of three of his nineteen wives. The book closes with the follow-up of these three womens lives after the execution of Lee. Judith Freeman has woven together a well told story that is more about the human soul than about a historical event. She has portrayed the probable feelings of these three women with an insight that is rarely seen in writings today. From the way that these three women likely viewed and dealt with such things as polygamy and Mormonism to their reaction when they discovered that their husband was implicated in and hunted down for heinous crimes he had committed before they knew him and how one of them stood by him through it all it makes a spellbinding read. Freeman is able to adjust her viewpoint and shows the ability to get inside the mind of and to feel and become the character. I couldn't put this one down until I was too tired to read each night and then I would pick it up the next day and become just as engrossed in it as I had been the day before.

Wow, I read a few of these reviews. Funny how whenever you write something that even touches the edge of religion, the zealots come out.This is NOT a story about the Mountain Meadow Massacre, though the incident and its characters figure prominently. This is NOT a story about merits or evils of Mormonism, though most of the characters are mormon and deal with their beliefs. Instead Freeman forces us to look at how humans have to come to grips with the complexities of belief and the realities of harsh everyday life.This is a story centered around a fictionalization of part of the life of John D Lee. Executed for his role in the massacre. But even more than that, it is centrally, a story about women, and how they love. Emma, the devoted wife who was in love with Lee when he took her as his 8th (well 17th) wife. How she dealt with the love and desire for a man she could not possess for herself but who totally possessed her. How she was bound more to the land and the religion by the man than the other way around.Ann, who at thirteen married Lee for complex reasons but in the end, was taken by his personality and her own curiosity, shall we say. But who was tormented more by the man whom she lost belief in and the religion she never believed in but was wary of. Lee's memory amd her mixed feelings for him dogged her life even when she had left. Moreso, maybe.Rachel, who in the end, realized that she was devoted to Lee for what he could promise her in the next life. An eternity next to the sister she idolized and loved. But Rachel's devotion may appear more as love than the love of the others. There was a certain fascination in this book for me. It is well done and I literally read it in two days almost straight through. The characters are real and their interactions, relationships and differences are real too. Even down to the point where you wonder what private characterizations one character has for the next is based on truth or an unadmitted jealously.Each part is told by one of the woman and each part represents their personality and fate. Emma's is rich and boisterous and hopeful. Ann's is meandering, lost, with moments of warmth and richness. Rachel's is cold, empty and barren with promises of hard times even among the good.This is very well written and very well researched. It is a small insight to what mormonism was under the eye of Smith and Young while it was still a living entity. It is also a beautiful insight to some of the most harsh and spectacular places on earth. Finally it is an insight into how women view love and even men. Maybe in the end, that is what I was reading for -- to find a little insight into myself.If you find it at the yard sale, pick it up, you will read it that night.

This is great writing. I was completely taken in by just about everything about this book. I found the characters complex, the scenery beautiful, the language believable. The women were all interesting to me, and I didn't find anywhere that my interest lagged. I even found myself seeing John D. Lee as human for the first time, something even his memoirs were unable to accomplish. I don't know much about the theology or morality of the 19th century Mormon church, so I can't really say whether it was accurate in that regard or not, although I found it believable. I do, however, know a great deal about Mountain Meadows, having read just about everything published about it, including much of the apologist garbage that passes for history written by defenders. I can tell you that I found nothing she wrote about the massacre with which I disagreed, right down to "putting the saddle on the right horse." Brigham Young was directly responsible for ordering the massacre, and John D. Lee was just following orders, although that makes him no less a murderer in my eyes. It is no better defense here than it was at Nuremberg or Mai Lai. I do confess a bias, however, although different from that of others. I first "met" Captain Alexander Fancher, leader of the Fancher party murdered at the meadows, as I was researching his brother, my great grandfather John Fancher. I found them and their families side by side in the 1850 census of San Diego, California. They had apparently come out together to try their hand at cattle raising and were headed for Tulare county in central California. There I saw a listing of Captain Fancher and his entire family, wife Eliza (whose blood stained dress Emma was wearing in the scene of her great humiliation), age 28, son Hampton, age 12, William age 10, Mary, age 9, Thomas, age 7, Martha, age 4, and lastly the twins, both 1 and a half, Sarah and Margaret, for whom my mother was named. All of these people would be murdered at Mountain Meadows by John D. Lee and those he led and followed. Even the twins, a mere 8 years old at the time of the massacre, did not survive. Only Kit Carson Fancher and Traphina (Emma's apparent accusor in the dress scene) survived, both born after 1850. Alexander and family had returned to Arkansas to collect family and friends to bring out to the California paradise and were headed to meet his brother when they met their fate. His brother John, with whom Captain Fancher was very close, didn't know of his brother's fate for some time after the massacre, and didn't know the truth until many years later. So you see, it takes quite a gifted writer to humanize someone like John Doyle Lee in my eyes. I even found him sympathetic at times. Freeman has found a way to zero in on one of the great mysteries of the Mountain Meadows Massacre: how otherwise decent men, who love and are loved, could find it in their hearts to commit such a slaughter of innocents. This is by far the best fictional account of the massacre a

Red Water is to Judith Freeman what The Poisonwood Bible is to Barbara Kingsolver. Their other novels are good, but these two are of a significantly higher caliber. Rich in descriptive detail, Red Water draws you into Utah's lonely, hauntingly beautiful landscape and dredges up skeletons furtively hidden in candy-coated closets. This ain't green jello and plastic-smile land; it's about human history. Mormons are no more or less "peculiar" than anyone else. Thus, it's a story about human struggle, ambition, jealousy, fear, oppression, prejudice, greed, perseverance, hope, triumph, love, dreams, faith, suffering, resignation: life.

I just finished this novel. I think Judith Freeman deserves a special award for writing this story. The research alone must have taken years. But what a remarkable end result. She writes of the Utah landscape with precision and awe. Her characters are readily believable and she has painted a supremely fair account of 19th Century Mormon Utah. I am not a historian, but I trust her detail to fact is accurate and unbiased. Anyone concerned with women's issues, religious literature and Western U.S. history will appreciate this fine piece of writing.