Grace Conlon

Satan's Caravan: a Victory over the Adversary Grace Conlon

Satan's Caravan, a Victory over the Adversary is an action-packed story of a young boy orphaned on the prairie during the turbulent pioneer movement of the mid-1800's. It is a novel of "historical fiction", based in part on the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. The boy is befriended by an unlikely hero-a middle-aged Boston schoolteacher who is running away from tragic events in his own life. In joining a wagon train of misfits, they are caught up in a daily struggle to survive. Along the way, the pioneers barely escape the murderous intentions of rogues with their party, lose some members during a flash flood and cope with the constant threat of Indian ambushes-culminating in a savage attack and massacre when they reach the territory that is now the state of Utah. The Indian attackers in Satan's Caravan, as is recorded in history of the region, were joined by members of the Mormon Church. The author delineates the unsettled state of society, which explains how such a massacre might have taken place. Satan's Caravan does not propose that this wagon train was the one ambushed in the mountain meadow but rather that the unsavory nature of some western-bound pioneers, and their behavior toward the earlier settlers, may have pushed the situation beyond the limits of human decency.