Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series No. 14
Hardback. 214 Pages. / 1-56085-104-X / $24.95

Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane, wife of long-time friend and benefactor of the Mormons, Thomas Leiper Kane, authored the book Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona. It was a first-hand inside look at Mormon polygamy (from a non-Mormon), which at that time was a national issue. The book was the result of an invitation four members of the Kane family received in 1872 to accompany Brigham Young from Salt Lake City to St. George, Utah. They remained in "Utah's Dixie" for several weeks while "Tom" attempted to regain his health. Twelve Mormon Homes tells of this trip and of the Mormon families they met during their stay. The book had a limited distribution, but because of its insightful look into Mormon society, the Tanner Trust Fund and the University of Utah republished the account in 1974, a hundred years after its initial publication. (It is once again out of print.) Several years later, Norman Bowen, a friend of the Kane family, discovered that Elizabeth Kane kept a journal of her St. George experiences while writing Twelve Mormon Homes and he edited her journal as a companion to her earlier book. Although she never approved of polygamy, in both Twelve Mormon Homes and A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, Elizabeth wrote with warmth and sympathy about the people she came to know.

In A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73: Elizabeth Kane's St. George Journal, you'll find the detailed stories of Elizabeth befriending the women of St. George while her two sons explored the red-rock bluffs and her husband hobnobbed with the likes of Jacob Hamblin. She found that they lived a "strange idyllic life" but nevertheless made her feel very much "at home." Her diary comments on the food (the wine is "horrid"), an unpretentious but enjoyable cotillion ball, and her discovery that Mormon sermons are "as dry and . . . orthodox as any I have heard [in Philadelphia]."

Around the evening hearth, Elizabeth's hosts told of Nephite wanderers among other beliefs. Artemisia Beaman Snow remembered the Palmyra mystic named Walters who tried unsuccessfully to obtain the gold plates from the Hill Cumorah, then relinquished the task to his successor, Joseph Smith. In comparison to the people of St. George, she found those in Salt Lake City to be "vulgar" imitations of the "best men and women, the most earnest in their belief, the most self-denying and 'primitive Christian' in their behavior clad in the homespun garments of the remote settlements."

Norman R. Bowen graduated from Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, and received a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1947. He served in the United States Navy during World War II, worked for the Spokesman Review in Spokane, Washington, and for the Deseret News, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He spent ten years as city editor on the latter paper. Mr. Bowen also acted as correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Newsfront Magazine, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He also edited Lowell Thomas: The Stranger Everyone Knew. He taught journalism at both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. Mr. Bowen's service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints included bishop in Bountiful, Utah, and mission president of the Eastern Atlantic States Mission. Norman Bowen died August 26, 1992.