Wtih the two younger of their four children, Evan and Willie, Elizabeth and Thomas accompanied Brigham Young from Salt Lake City to St. George where they stayed for two months. The journey to St. George took twelve days, and her letters to her father, William Wood, which he published in 1874 as Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona, provided a first-hand inside look at Mormon polygamy, then a national issue. A hundred years later, this book was republished by the University of Utah Tanner Trust Fund with editorial notes by Everett L. Cooley. He expressed regret that "Mrs. Kane left no description of her two months stay in St. George" (p. 139). Bowen and his wife Donna became friends with the Kane family. Grandson E. Kent Kane had Elizabeth's St. George journal among some family papers. Donna Bowen, who was helping the Kanes with genealogical research, encouraged her husband and a daughter, Mary Karen Bowen Solomon, to prepare the manuscript for publication.

Norman Bowen wrote a brief preface in 1991 but died in August 1992 before publication. The family and publisher persisted to produce this delightful and insightful work. A prefatory note by Margery W. Ward, series editor, explains other assistants on the project. The original journal's spelling and punctuation have been reproduced, according to the editor; the journal was probably compiled from notes and letters Elizabeth wrote in Utah since she refers to her diary as a source (p. 61). Annotations in various hands appear, but only Thomas's are included in the printed version, set off in brackets and preceded by "TK:". The text is voluminously footnoted; and while the individual notes are helpful, the sheer quantity disrupted the reading. The introduction should also explain Thomas Kane's involvement with the Mormons, why they came to Utah, Elizabeth's use of nicknames, and the background of the journal itself. Much of this information appears in the profile, but I had to read the book jacket and the introduction to Twelve Mormon Homes to understand the context of Elizabeth's journal.

Elizabeth, born in England in 1836, came to New York with her family at age eight. Her mother died when she was twelve. At sixteen, she married her cousin, Thomas Leiper Kane, fourteen years her senior; they had three sons and a daughter. A voracious reader, Elizabeth filled her writings with literary allusions; her style is strong, witty, and personal, revealing her sharp and inquiring mind. She and Thomas were devoted to each other; one motive for her journal-keeping was to share their lives with each other, especially since Thomas was often away from home. In addition to home and family duties, Elizabeth was a secretary and accountant in the family land business. At forty-five, she began to study medicine, a life-long interest, and graduated from the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia in 1883, the same year her husband died. Elizabeth continued actively learning until her death in 1909 at age seventy-three. Unfortunately, Mary Karen Bowen Solomon's otherwise helpful profile is not documented.

Elizabeth's St. George journal begins on Christmas Day, the day after their arrival in southern Utah. Days are noted for all entries; but because she rarely gives a specific date, it is not always possible to know exactly when a particular event occurred, and the diary has a few gaps. Far more than an account of daily activities, Elizabeth concentrates on insightful descriptions and feelings about the people and the physical surroundings. (Unlike Twelve Mormon Homes, she uses people's names, rather than pseudonyms.) She focuses on four main topics: the Mormons/Mormonism, Indians, pioneer life, and the environment. Brigham Young was in St. George during the entire time, and her observations and reports of both his public doings and private conversations and interactions with them are woven throughout her diary. She displays a special interest in women and so her journal contains frequent descriptions of and conversations with Mormon women; she mentions the Relief Society several times. "I met none but good and kindly women there [St. George], as in the other Utah homes where I became familiar," she avers (p. 177).

She sympathetically describes the Mormon achievement of settling Southern Utah with its hot summers, dry soil, insects, and unpredictable rains. She mentions the physical trials, especially eye diseases caused by dust from the strong, hot winds. She describes the beauty of the landscape, noting particularly rock formations and colors, caves and streams, but details some of the land's harshness as well. Having been a pioneer in Pennsylvania. Elizabeth was impressed with what the Saints had produced in the difficult land:

But how glad Uncle Sam should be to have these tamed civilised settlers come to subdue the desert and make it blossom; so that it will help to feed his miners instead of having the savage colonists who usually pioneer ahead of civilisation! . . .

I must say again I think Uncle Sam will stand very much in his own light if he drives out settlers so much disposed to "make a silk purse of a sow's ear," and really doing it too, in spite of the proverb! (pp. 90, 99)

Indians held a special fascination for Elizabeth. She talks at length about the various groups of Indians in the area and describes their looks, dress, and mannerisms, especially the Pi-edes (Piutes) and the Navajos near the Mormon settlements. Elizabeth also reports stories about the Indians told by Mormon settlers and describes the interaction between the Mormons and the Indians.

The distinction that Elizabeth maintained between Mormonism as a doctrine and Mormons as individuals and as a people provide one of the journal's most intriguing themes. Thomas seemed interested in the Mormon religion, but Elizabeth, a "Christian," disliked Mormonism, feared the Mormon influence on her husband, and saw his interest as a danger to his own faith. Her skepticism about distinctive Mormon doctrines—such as the prophetic mission of Joseph Smith and polygamy—remained strong. She and her husband agreed to receive a patriarchal blessing from the stake patriarch because "I am sure it won't make a Mormon of me, and as I feel very kindly to the old man, I mean to go and not hurt his feelings by another refusal" (p. 162). As a contemporary Mormon reader, I was particularly interested in the idiosyncratic telling of some near-canonized accounts. For instance, Brigham Young told the Kanes about seeing a light in the heavens the night the golden plates were found (pp. 74-75).

Elizabeth praises a Mrs. Lange as a "shrewd and hard-headed" woman, then wonders how she could have converted to Mormonism "as it seemed as if no delusion of the senses or the imagination could have come over her" (p. 67). When Elizabeth asked Brigham Young whether an Indian prophet were really inspired, Brigham replied no. "If he was genuinely inspired—of course he would have been inspired to come at once to him, Brigham Young." Elizabeth adds ruefully, "Brigham Young is so shrewd and full of common sense that I keep forgetting he is a Mormon himself, and this answer, so natural a one from his point of view took me completely aback. I felt as if I had asked one lunatic his opinion of another!" (p. 96)

But her reserve melted as she saw the sincerity and experienced the kindness of the Mormons. A touching section of the diary records an episode when Thomas suddenly became so ill that his life was despaired of (pp. 168-70). The entire community rallied to send him choice items to tempt his appetite, to sit up with him, and to pray with him and for him. She records movingly how she came into a room unexpectedly and found an unidentified friend, presumably Brigham Young, on his knees, praying aloud for her husband. As soon as Thomas could travel, the Kanes returned to Salt Lake City and then to their home, so the diary ends soon after this period, but her closing entries communicate compunction and remorse if she has portrayed the Mormons harshly.

"If I had entries in this diary to make again, they would be written in a kindlier spirit," she wrote in one place, adding in a copied letter to her daughter, Harriet: "Though I had no vote, I felt as if I could not free myself from blood-guiltiness. . . . I have written to you as a sort of penance for the hard thoughts and contemptuous opinions I have myself instilled into you" (p. 170). Her final summation is gentle: "Erring as they may be from what I think the truth, still I cannot forget what rest and peace of soul I have enjoyed among them, and when I go back to the theoretically orthodox society of the East with its practical infidelity that asks 'Where is now thy God,' I shall look back with tender feelings to St. George" (pp. 175-76).

Elizabeth Kane, an intelligent and sympathetic though skeptical outsider among the Latter-day Saints, has provided a wealth of insight into early Mormon pioneer life and beliefs. In a collection of travel narratives usually dominated by male perspectives, it is a witty, tender, and compassionate chronicle.

Western Historical Quarterly, Susan Swetnam
In the winter of 1872-1873, Elizabeth Kane traveled to St. George, Utah, with her ailing husband, Thomas Leiper Kane, a longtime gentile friend of Brigham Young who mediated between the Mormons and Johnson's Army in 1857. Kane's published account of her travels from Salt Lake to St. George, Twelve Mormon Homes, appeared in 1873; A Gentile Account is her private journal about St. George (perhaps composed later from notes and letters), published here for the first time.

Elizabeth Kane is a marvelous writer. With an anthropologist's care, she describes housekeeping, agriculture, folklore, and social relationships to chronicle Mormon society—a culture foreign to her, and one about which she is initially skeptical and amused. She creates memorable characters, paints vivid, funny scenes (we see her husband sitting to receive a patriarchal blessing "as if in the dentists' chair, composed to his fate"), and has a knack for just the right word, the telling specific.

Kane is especially interested in the condition of Mormon women—in particular, the effects of polygamy. Through the narrative, she anguishes over particular women who must share their husbands—and she disapproves of their complacent mates. Still, Kane is open-minded, and watching her opinion evolve is one of this narrative's pleasures. Over time, she comes to admire individuals' sacrifices, their faith, their unending, earnest work, until, after her neighbors nursed Mr. Kane through a dangerous illness, she castigates herself for earlier captious comments; "If I had entries in this diary to make again, they would be written in a kindlier spirit" (p. 168). Though Kane still disapproves of polygamy, she ends her journal by admitting how much she has come to admire the "primitive Christians" of Utah's "Arcadia" (vs. comfortable Salt Lake City), and how much she fears their future persecution (pp. 178-79).

This volume's ancillary materials are generally helpful—most consistently about Kane herself, about practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and about people Kane meets—though a few notes seem awkward (like #141, which interrupts her moving epiphany). A map of St. George's environs might be added, as might additional notes about climate, irrigation practices, and popular and high culture. The introduction leaves some bothersome gaps: we do not learn that Mormons earlier nursed Mr. Kane in Nauvoo until a note on page 49, and it is never quite clear how he initially got to know Brigham Young. Incorporating such essential background at the start (along with information about the settlements of St. George) would provide a fuller context for Kane's words.

Despite these quibbles, this is a book well worth reading—one that will especially delight historians of Utah's Dixie and of LDS women. As the editors have recognized, Kane is an admirable informant—intelligent, funny, outspoken, thoroughly good-hearted. "They can all teach me something," she writes of her subjects—and readers will finish this book feeling like she has taught them many things worth hearing, not only about history's specifics, but also about the tolerance possible when people of good will interact (p. 155).