New book about Iowa City to Utah trek: 'Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy'

Kindle edition available from Amazon. The following text is from a recent review by the Washington Post, which also posted text from Chapter 1:

The journey of the handcart travelers from Iowa to Utah became a defining myth of Mormon history, the equivalent, as David Roberts observes, of the voyage of the Mayflower in American colonial history. ...In the judgment of Roberts, who has written extensively about the American West and its peoples, the mythmaking has a sinister aspect, crossing the line into historical cover-up. The handcart companies -- as these traveling groups were called -- suffered from hunger, disease, exposure and death; their mortality rate dramatically exceeded the average for overland companies, despite the fact that the Mormons traveled but half the distance covered by the much more numerous immigrants to California and Oregon. ...

In the judgment of Roberts, who has written extensively about the American West and its peoples, the mythmaking has a sinister aspect, crossing the line into historical cover-up. The handcart companies -- as these traveling groups were called -- suffered from hunger, disease, exposure and death; their mortality rate dramatically exceeded the average for overland companies, despite the fact that the Mormons traveled but half the distance covered by the much more numerous immigrants to California and Oregon. ...

From Chapter One:

From Iowa City to Florence, Patience and her father normally stood inside the yoke and pushed the cart by its crossbar. Sisters Maria (nineteen years old) and Jane (fourteen) pulled the cart by means of ropes tied to the shafts of the yoke. Sister Sarah, only twelve years old, pushed from behind the cart. Patience's mother, Amy, fifty-four years old; Patience's twenty-two-year-old sister, Tamar, who had fallen ill with the flulike malady the Saints called "mountain fever"; and her little brother Robert, who was nine, walked alongside. Before the family reached Florence, however, James Loader grew too weak to help with the pushing. Maria took his place inside the yoke, and the cart trundled on under the power of only four young women and girls. ...