Variation West

By Ardyth Kennelly

Ardyth Kennelly's crowning literary achievement spans four generations of a family in Mormon Utah, from the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. Two fictional daughters of John D. Lee, notorious for his role in the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, and their descendants experience the changing historical eras, from the Old West to the 1960s. The book, set mostly in Salt Lake City, is an immense literary collage, a colorful procession of comic and tragic stories--of domestic life under Mormon polygamy, historical events and personages, and superbly drawn characters. On a deeper level, the author illustrates the continuity of time and life, the effects of fanaticism and violence, and the destructive power of social ideals of female beauty.Summary: Thirteen-year-old Hindle Lee, her mother dead and her father on the run after leading the Mormons' 1857 massacre of a wagon train at Mountain Meadows, goes to work in a convalescent home and eventually takes on a career as an "eclectic physician of women's ailments." Her sister Lucitie travels to England and back and becomes part of a four-generation hairdressing dynasty. Through the stories of Hindle's patients, and through the authentic speech, sense of place, and experience of historical events that Kennelly re-creates for us, Salt Lake City of the nineteenth century comes alive. The stories of that wondrous past, made mythic through the mind of a little Australian girl, are handed down to Hindle's granddaughter Rosetta, who comes of age in the changing times of the 1920s. With a spirit hungry for knowledge, Rosetta becomes a keen observer of the workings of the world and the human psyche. She and her cousin Lavonne, working as beauty operators and never separated for long, must deal all their lives with the hard truths about men, women, and beauty, and with different kinds of fanaticism and violence. All these elements are drawn together in a final reverberating event that only an artist could make meaningful.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0990432009
• ISBN13: 9780990432005
• Release Date: November 2014
• Publisher: Sunnycroft Books
• Length: 760 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"