Nadene LeCheminant’s novel, The Gates of Eden, is a moving story that takes place in the mid-1800s and is based on the life of the author’s grandmother when she was a teen.
When Josephine Bell’s father died, the family plummeted from a life of middle-class Victorian comfort to overwhelming debt and dire poverty. After paying off his debts, losing their home and most of their possessions, Josephine and her mother live in a scrubby Liverpool flat, working in a clothing manufacturing shop under deplorable conditions.
Josephine and her mother are befriended by missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and accept their offer to cross the ocean and journey overland to a Mormon community in Utah. Eighteen people die on the treacherous six-week ocean passage, but Josephine and her mother survive to arrive in New York. The group then travels by train in cattle cars to Iowa City. From there they travel by foot, using handcarts to haul their personal goods.
By the time the group reaches their Utah destination, the survivors have walked 1,200 miles, all the while remembering and believing Brigham Young’s promise, “The Lord will provide. You shall come in safety.” In their new community, the members are assigned jobs, most of them living with existing families, working in whatever areas their talents support.
When Josephine, then 16, is pressed into a polygamous marriage to a much older man, her faith begins to waver.
The Gates of Eden is a well-written account of the historical Mormon Handcart Migration. For a taste of history seen through a teen’s eyes, I highly recommend this novel.
This sounds like a good book. I can’t imagine what she had to live through. What a tough life.
Yes, it was a tough life. This is an interesting book, and historically fascinating. I had never heard of the Mormon Handcart Migration–what a tough trek!