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death by a firing squad or being beheaded (the latter choice was eliminated in 1888, because—not surprisingly—nobody ever opted for it). Or, for those who were a little less anxious to have their blood shed, or who might simply be non-Mormon, there was always the possibility of a non-enlightened death: a simple hanging. As it turned out, a fair amount of blood ended up getting spilled. From the late 1840s to 1977, roughly fifty men were executed in Utah: eight by hanging, one reportedly by disemboweling, two by undocumented means; the remaining thirty-nine were shot by firing squads. Obviously, several other states—notably, ones in the South—executed greater numbers of men during the same period. None, though, would put to death so many by a means that so pointedly resulted in the spilling of blood, and no other state in the Union had a capital punishment code that prescribed its methods of death according to religious doctrine.

When Lee was given the choice of the mode of execution, he chose according to his faith: He chose to be shot.

On March 23, 1877, Lee was taken to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. “I do not fear death,” he said that morning. “I shall never go to a worse place than I am now in.” Then, after he denounced Brigham Young for leading the Mormons astray from the teachings of Joseph Smith, Lee added: “I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner. I cannot help it. It is my last word—it is so.” (Later, after hearing a report of Lee’s words, Brigham Young—in the manner of the Book of Mormon’s Lord God—cursed Lee and all his generations to come.)

Lee sat back down on his coffin and spoke his final words: “Center my heart, boys. Don’t mangle my body.”

The executioners obliged the request. They fired their bullets in close formation through John D. Lee’s heart, and he fell back across his coffin. His blood spilled into the Utah soil, where the blood of the massacre’s victims had spilled a generation before, and then his body was placed in the wooden casket and given to his family for burial.

The whole affair had been another violent turning point in the Mormon world. The massacre had been disgraceful, and so was the way that Lee was used to relieve the Mormon structure of its culpability in the matter. (Eighty-four years later, the church finally cleared Lee’s name and reinstated him to full membership, with restoration of his former blessings.)

After Mountain Meadows, Mormons had to face that murder was everywhere in God’s promised lands—in the America forsaken, and the kingdom to come. The blood would not stop spilling, and now the chosen people found its stain on their own hands.

THESE WERE THE LEGENDS THAT MY MOTHER HEARD growing up in Mormon Utah, and they were part of the inheritance that she passed along to us. And then there were the stories of her own family.

MY MOTHER’S MOTHER, MELISSA KERBY, WAS THE GRANDDAUGHTER of Francis Kerby and the great-granddaughter of Emanuel Masters Murphy. By the time of Melissa’s generation, both the Murphy and Kerby clans had settled into the Provo region of Utah, about fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. Provo was the second city that Brigham Young ordered organized in the region in the late 1840s and, more than most Mormon Utah colonies, it had a violent history. It was named after a man named Etienne Provost, whose exploration party had been slaughtered by the Snake Indians on the Jordan River, many years before. In its first decade or so, Provo saw a fair amount of battles with local Indians over land use and cattle grazing—though it was the Indians, more often than not, who paid with their lives for these skirmishes.

Utah’s first recorded execution—an unofficial one—took place in the Provo area. A bold and nasty-tempered Ute Indian named Patsowits (or Pat Souette, as the Mormons spelled it) had killed a local settler in 1850 and then went on to kill several of the Mormons’ cattle and horses. He also threatened to kill a local chief for acquiescing to the Mormons’ land-grab. He was captured by two Ute Indians. Anxious to improve relations