BE FOREWARNED: Utah is a state of mind, and the state of mind you adopt will determine the books you will want to read. As Brigham Young, the Mormon colonizer, said, “This is the place.” That leaves you to answer the question, “the place for what?”
If you want to powder ski on “the greatest snow on earth,” this is the place; if you want to visit five national parks from Zion to Bryce, Capital Reef to Arches and Canyonlands, this is the place; and if you want to understand what psychic hold the Mormon Church has on those of us who live here, this is definitely the place.
Utah is a place of paradoxes: a state of hard-working people who are kind, industrious, and community-minded; it is also a place of historic cruelty toward Indigenous people and those on the margins who do not comply with the dominant culture’s mores. It is a state of creativity, resilience and resistance. Now in drought, we are holding brine shrimp in cupped hands making vows to return water to a shrinking Great Salt Lake.
Utah is always underestimated. It shouldn’t be. Prepare to be surprised.
This is a place of terrible beauty — of eroding and evolving beliefs, where serpentine canyons lead to windows carved out of stone framing a turquoise sky. The view of America’s red rock wilderness is disorienting. Leave your watches home. Time is told through geologic eras exposed by wind, water and faith.
WHAT IS THE STATE OF READING IN UTAH?
It begins by reading the land. Here are some guides: THE BROKEN LAND: Adventures in Great Basin Geology, by Frank DeCourten, paired with Stephen Trimble’s beautifully photographed THE SAGEBRUSH OCEAN: A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country, by David B. Williams, is an essential companion with more than 270 plants and animals identified and described within their ecological communities.
Within Utah’s five national parks and 11 national monuments do seek out their visitor centers, where a cornucopia of natural history books particular to each park can be found. A ZION CANYON READER, edited by Nathan N. Waite and Reid L. Neilson, is a perfect example.
Indigenous voices are strong and varied in Utah. Ute historian Forrest Cuch’s excellent A HISTORY OF UTAH’S AMERICAN INDIANS introduces the eight federally recognized Tribal Nations located in the state. EDGE OF MORNING: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears, edited by Jacqueline Keeler, is an evocation on why these sacred lands matter to Native communities, including voices like Regina Lopez Whiteskunk, Willie Grayeyes and Jonah Yellowman. Stacie Shannon Denetsosie’s stunning collection, THE MISSING MORNING STAR: And Other Stories, was just published with rave reviews.
WHICH BOOKS CAN LEAD TO A DESERT STATE OF MIND?
Begin with the classics: DESERT SOLITAIRE: A Season in the Wilderness, by Edward Abbey, an antimemoir on wildness set in Arches National Park in the years when Abbey was a park ranger there. Published in 1968, it can be considered a Thoreauvian counterpoint to the turbulence surrounding the Vietnam War. Then, for a romp of a novel with a bent toward sabotage, Abbey’s THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG will inspire you — as it did the environmental group Earth First! — to reimagine the Colorado River without Glen Canyon Dam. If you find Abbey’s politics problematic, I suggest the saucy DESERT CABAL, by Amy Irvine.
(Lynda Percival | The Salt Lake Tribune) A copy of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Abbey seen in Ken Sanders' Rare Books store in 2006.
THE LAST CHEATER’S WALTZ: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest, by Ellen Meloy, is a sharp-edged work with quickwitted storytelling that shows cultural tensions between the land and the politics of extraction be it uranium, oil and gas or coal to complicate the scenery. And Craig Childs’s elegant exploration of water in arid country with A SECRET KNOWLEDGE OF WATER could not be more germane to our current megadrought. Scott Carrier’s RUNNING AFTER ANTELOPE is why you come to the West, for spacious prose, wild tales and a stand-alone quirky imagination shaped by the land.
WHICH BOOKS CAN FEED A MORMON STATE OF MIND?
Two biographies create a bedrock for understanding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints: JOSEPH SMITH: Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Lyman Bushman, and BRIGHAM YOUNG: Pioneer Prophet, by John G. Turner. Both authors present these iconic figures in human terms. The charisma of Smith as a mystic and Young as a visionary pragmatist led the “saints” into a theology of western expansion only to find they had a salt desert to tame. But Fawn Brodie’s iconic portrait of Joseph Smith in NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY remains the gold standard. The cost to her for telling the truth through her impeccable research was a vilification by the LDS Church. Annie Clark Tanner’s A MORMON MOTHER is a tough and tender commentary about how patriarchy and polygamy shaped women’s lives through heartbreak and loneliness, even as it deepened their spiritual strength. MORMON COUNTRY and RECAPITULATION by Wallace Stegner are wise works of historical intelligence with rich renderings of Salt Lake City following settlement. Jonathan T. Bailey’s WHEN I WAS RED CLAY: A Journey of Identity, Healing, and Wonder is a courageous memoir of growing up gay in a rural Mormon community and avoiding erasure by finding refuge in wilderness.
WHICH BOOKS CAN TAKE ME INTO UTAH’S UNSETTLED STATE OF MIND?
Start by reading Juanita Brooks’s THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE, an acclaimed history that recounts a series of attacks led by Mormon militiamen in 1857 near St. George, Utah, that killed 120 emigrants on a wagon train bound for California. Led by settler John D. Lee, they dressed up like Indians and convinced a few Southern Paiutes to join them so it would appear they were responsible. Judith Freeman, in her textured novel RED WATER, broadens the story by focusing on the cracks in the lives of Lee’s plural wives. THE BEAR RIVER MASSACRE: A Shoshone History, by Darren Parry, former chairman of the Northern Shoshone, tells a searing account of white settlers to the north who murdered 250 Northern Shoshone families in 1863 to gain their land.
(Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) The site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre near Veyo, Monday. Dec. 4, 2023.
JOURNEY TO TOPAZ, by Yoshiko Uchida, is another shadowed remembrance. Written in 1971, it was the first novel for young readers about the injustices of the Japanese internment camps during World War II, which Uchida survived as a child. The novel, set in Utah’s west desert, where thousands of Japanese American families were held as prisoners, remains a haunting reminder of how indignities and dignity can reside side by side.
To expand your poetic state of mind read WEST: A Translation, an illuminating book by Utah’s former poet laureate Paisley Rekdal commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. Asian, Irish and African American workers’ voices are brought into heightened relief in this collection. Katharine Coles in WAYWORD transforms science into poetry, “This is the world now. On fire. Letting go.” Edward Lueders’s prose poems in THE SALT LAKE PAPERS ask, “Is there any land that is not holy land?”
The poets David Lee and May Swenson answer Wallace Stegner’s challenge to “create a society to match the scenery” through their land-laced poetry. Lee’s wildly amusing and poignantly crafted THE PORCINE CANTICLES will have you laughing and weeping within the stanzas of a brilliant storyteller. Swenson’s poems in MAY OUT WEST show her precise attention to nature’s animated world, “Because all is movement — all is breathing change.”
Nan Seymour’s communal poem irreplaceable is what she calls “a chorus of praise” with lines from 432 local poets for Great Salt Lake.
WHAT ABOUT UTAH’S BOOK CULTURE MIGHT SURPRISE VISITORS?
Torrey House Press. They publish spirited books at the intersection of literature and environmental advocacy. Authors include Linda Hogan, Chip Ward, Betsy Gaines Quammen, Zak Podmore, Pam Houston and Brooke Williams.
IS THERE ANYWHERE THAT ALL THESE VARIED STATES OF MIND IN UTAH CONVERGE?
In a book: PARADISE RECLAIMED, by Halldór Laxness, the Icelandic writer who won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. In this strange and poetic novel of ruin and redemption, Utah and Mormons appear prominently. In a place: the Gilgal Sculpture Garden. I will leave it up to the curious to try to find it!
(Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gilgal Gardens, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2015.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS’S UTAH READING LIST
THE SAGEBRUSH OCEAN, Stephen Trimble
A NATURALIST’S GUIDE TO CANYON COUNTRY, David B. Williams
A HISTORY OF UTAH’S AMERICAN INDIANS, Forrest S. Cuch
EDGE OF MORNING, edited by Jacqueline Keeler
DESERT SOLITAIRE and THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG, Edward Abbey
DESERT CABAL, Amy Irvine
THE LAST CHEATER’S WALTZ, Ellen Meloy
THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE OF WATER, Craig Childs
RUNNING AFTER ANTELOPE, Scott Carrier
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, Fawn M. Brodie
MORMON COUNTRY, Wallace Stegner
WHEN I WAS RED CLAY, Jonathan T. Bailey
THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE, Juanita Brooks
RED WATER, Judith Freeman
THE BEAR RIVER MASSACRE, Darren Parry
JOURNEY TO TOPAZ, Yoshiko Uchida
WEST: A Translation, Paisley Rekdal
THE PORCINE CANTICLES, David Lee
IRREPLACEABLE, Nan Seymour
PARADISE RECLAIMED, Halldór Laxness
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.