The Ballad of Juanita Brooks

For nearly a century, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was one of the American West’s most carefully managed silences. Then Juanita Brooks told the truth.

Born into the founding families of Mormonism, Brooks was a devout believer, mother, schoolteacher, folklorist, and historian. From her kitchen table in southern Utah’s red rock desert, she pursued the truth about the 1857 massacre, tracking down confessions, diaries, and church records that p...