Product Description

In the 1850s, Jean Rio, a deeply spiritual widow, was moved by the promises of Mormon missionaries and set out from England for Utah. Traveling across the Atlantic by steamer, up the Mississippi by riverboat, and westward by wagon, Rio kept a detailed diary of her extraordinary journey.

In Faith and Betrayal, Sally Denton, an award-winning journalist and Rio’s great-great-granddaughter, uses the long-lost diary to re-create Rio’s experience. While she marvels at the great natural beauty of Utah, Rio’s enthusiasm for her new life turns to disillusionment over Mormon polygamy and violence against nonbelievers, as well as the harshness of frontier life. She sets out for California, where she finds a new religion and the freedom she longed for. Unusually intimate and full of vivid detail, this is an absorbing story of a quintessential American pioneer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #397730 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-11
• Released on: 2006-07-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Denton, a journalist who previously explored Mormon history in American Massacre, relays and interprets a British ancestor's experiences in crossing an ocean and a continent to join the Latter-day Saints in Utah. Jean Rio Baker was, by Denton's assessment, a wealthy Victorian woman who "fell sway" to the message of Mormon missionaries in the 1840s. Not long after her husband died, she packed up her children and other members of her extended family and embarked from England on the arduous voyage to Utah. This short biography is at its best when it adheres closely to Rio Baker's own journal of her experiences on the ocean (where she tragically buried a child at sea) and the plains, which she vividly describes in fascinating detail. But for the long stretches of Rio Baker's life where she either did not keep a journal or it has not survived, readers are left with Denton's own rather angry assessment of how her great-great-grandmother was deceived and betrayed by the Mormons. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with numerous factual errors about 19th-century Mormonism and the Book of Mormon, which may cause readers to question other elements in the biography. Despite the sloppy research and some unfair caricatures, Denton portrays her ancestor as a resourceful, independent mother and midwife who heroically survived her religious disillusionment. (Apr. 28)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Journalist and historian Denton (American Massacre, 2003) traces the westward journey of her great-great grandmother, Mormon convert Jean Rio Griffiths. Basing this chronicle largely on Jean Rio's diaries, the author is able to paint an intimate portrait of one uniquely American experience. Leaving her comfortable home in England, middle-aged widow Jean Rio traveled across the ocean, the plains, and the mountains with her seven children, seeking the elusive Eden promised by the Mormon missionaries. Finally reaching Utah and the Mormon settlement, a deeply spiritual Jean Rio grew quickly disillusioned with the autocratic Mormon leadership and the practice of polygamy. Ultimately renouncing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she reclaimed her independence and settled in California. Though Denton's kinship to her subject tends to color her objectivity, her attention to historical and descriptive detail enhances this testament to the pioneer spirit. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“An authentic American epic. . . . A harrowing and heartbreaking tale of the Old West that we have not heard before.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A great, often scary American story.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Rich in the history of the time and redolent with strong personalities, Sally Denton’s newest book is a compelling look at a slice of America through the lens of an unlikely pioneer.” –Santa Fe Journal

“As taut as a mytery and as lucid as journalism, Faith and Betrayal is both intimate and epic.”–The New Mexican


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

That Pioneer Spirit
Jean Rio, Mormon convert, traveled from England with a large group of people to settle in the barren land of "Deseret", which is now modern day Utah. Fed by her faith, her ultimate belief that she was right in her convictions, and a determined spirit, Jean not only survived this perilous journey, but helped others survive it along the way. Sally Denton, Jean's great great granddaughter, recounts her relatives momnumental journey in the small and quiet book, "Faith and Betrayal".

Using Jean Rio's diary as a record of account in this book, Denton reconstructs the history of her family, and the decision of Jean Rio to leave her life of priviledge in England to the great unknown. Starting off in luxury, Jean converts to Mormonism and decides her faith should bring her to America and Utah, as one of those brave pioneers. The rest of the story recounts Jean's life in Utah, her disillusionment with Mormonism, and her eventual resettling to California.

Jean's trek across the United States would earn my five stars by itself. Denton's reconstruction of the journey of Jean and her entourage is compelling and amazing. I long since knew about the travels of Mormon pioneers, but never has the perilous journey been so wonderfully reconstructed. It was amazing to read of Jean's growth during the trip, finding skills she never knew she had. This is one pioneer woman who deserves her story to be told.

Much has been and will be said about Denton's view on Mormonism, and her "obvioius bias" and several will discount her story by their "factual errors". Any book written that dares suggest that a religion, such as Mormonism, has faults, is bound to be attacked. It is almost tiresome that it happens, but alas, it is. At least Denton has said her peace, and has shared it in a wonderful book.

I highly recommend this story for anyone who wants a intrguing story about a woman who had the courage to follow her convictions, and live her life based on her beliefs.

Not Quite Sure What This Is
I was very disappointed while reading this book. Contrary to some reviewers I did not find it compelling and the errors and bias rather put me off. For instance, Wilford Woodruff did not make polygamy illegal (that was the U.S. Government), each Mormon did not have to get married three different ways to make it to heaven, and one could cite pages of similar things. These could all be forgiven, however, were there a strong narrative framework with a consistent, engaging style, but alas...

A betrayal of facts
Sally Denton's Faith and Betrayal is a disappointing book. It promised all the elements of an exceptionally dramatic (and true) story: love and loss, wealth and poverty, dedication and disillusionment, an epic journey, a peculiar religion, polygamy, theocracy, a massacre, and perhaps betrayal. But Denton's account is so replete with inaccuracies and confusion of facts that it destroys all credibility. Listing her errors would take nearly as many pages as the book itself. In addition she failed to use the richest repository of primary sources of Mormon history-the LDS Church Historical Department Archives. Presumably this is because she assumed she would not be welcome, she believed the records there had been selectively censored, or she thought they would have little relevance.

As a non-Mormon historian working on the stories of disillusioned converts in the same period of the mid-nineteenth century, I can assure her that for the past decade I have never been refused generous help in the Church Archives and have found the records there amazingly rich, especially the correspondence of Brigham Young and the diaries of contemporaries of those who left the church.

Denton makes Jean Rio's piano a pivotal issue, which she says was brought to Utah in 1851, though Jean Rio never mentions it in her trip diary nor does the captain of the company she traveled with in his (which is in the Church Archives). Denton fails to give a source for her account of it. It is quite possible Jean Rio ordered the piano later after her arrival in Salt Lake and had it shipped from the East. As for the tar-covered crate (p. 165), if that is in a museum in California, could not have Denton done the research to find where it is?

Was Jean Rio's piano taken by the church leaders through "consecration"-a rule of stewardship (pp. xvii, 129)? Did Denton bother to inquire in the Church Archives what the consecration records show? Not all records survived, but many did. It is unlikely the church purged them of information about the piano. Likewise, did Denton ever ask the staff at the Museum of Church History and Art about the provenance of the piano? One Jean Rio descendent believes it was gifted to the museum by a Mormon descendant. Here again Denton confuses her facts: She states (p. 130) that the piano is in the "Church Temple Museum"; there is no such institution.

Denton claims the piano ended up in the "Amelia Palace, the home of Young's favorite wife, a beautiful Englishwoman named Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning..." (p. 129). Here Denton has all too typically confused Young's so-called "favorite" wife Harriet Amelia Folsom with a later wife, Ann Eliza. Neither were English. The Gardo House, the so-called "Amelia's Palace," was not finished until after Brigham Young's death; Amelia lived in it a short period to establish her claim in Young's will, while Ann Eliza never lived there.

Denton quotes from one of my papers (pp. 153-54), and although the quote is correct, she misinterprets my account, stating "The flow of Mormon defectors had become the largest emigration to that point, far surpassing even the California gold rush." No records can support that idea. Likewise, she claims that "U.S. Army escorts oversaw a burgeoning traffic of disaffected Mormons fleeing Zion." There was only one such escort from Salt Lake of approximately forty families.

Although a beautifully produced little book, publisher Alfred A. Knopf should be embarrassed at having accepted and published such a consistently unreliable "history." I'm sorry to advise potential readers not to waste their money.