In fact, most female immigrants to Utah were former shopgirls, factory workers, and home pieceworkers in London and Manchester, and many were illiterate. Were they also naive adventuresses? Bartholomew fleshes out real-life profiles of these pioneering women through available letters, diaries, and public documents. They were by-and-large devout, and most of them approached their uncertain future with their eyes wide open. At minimum, they were least vaguely aware of what their religious commitment would entail.

So if they did not fulfill Victorian fantasies of young concubines who had been abducted into desert harems, what about the romanticized icons of Mormon inspirational literature? Writes Rebecca Bartholomew: "These women made mistakes. But if they were not angels, neither were they fools. They are likable. Their lives had meaning. They demonstrated that virtue has unlikely habitats and could even sprout in that spiritual chamber of horrors, that Eden betrayed, that whited sepulchre, Mormondom."

Rebecca Bartholomew is a graduate of the University of Utah and a former history instructor at Salt Lake Community College. She is the author of Audacious Women: Early British Mormon Immigrants, Brigham Young's Forest Farm Home, and Lost Heroines: Little-Known Women Who Changed Their World. She is the co-author of Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies and is a contributing author to Sister Saints. She has recently launched her own imprint, Uintah Springs Press.