Mountain Meadow and the Little Schoolteacher

by Debora Threedy (Dammeron Valley, UY}

This play is based on the life of Juanita Brooks, particularly the years from 1918 to 1951. The central mystery of her life is this: she was seemingly ordinary Mormon housewife. Widowed as a young mother, married a second time to a man 17 years her senior, she had five children of her own and helped her husband’s four sons. She held positions of authority in her church. She worked at a job for almost her entire life. How did such a woman come to publish the first accurate account of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the full story of which had been actively suppressed by the LDS Church for nearly a hundred years? Where did she get the courage to tell the truth despite the opposition of her community and even her family?