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These Latter Days John F. Blair, Publisher "You listen to me, my girl," Ruth Douglass warns her rebellious daughter. "You've only got three choices in this world, and only three. A woman can be a virgin, a wife, or a widow." Born a good Mormon in genteel Salt Lake City, Ruth feels religiously compelled to marry Samuel Douglass, a man she scarcely knows. She follows him into the Idaho wilderness of the 1890s. Bearing her children unwillingly, Ruth grapples with frontier life while her husband descends into madness, receiving revelations from God. In a desperate bid for freedom, Ruth and her children flee to the desert town of St. Elmo, California. There, she builds a life and lives a lie: the Widow Douglass. Her courage elicits the admiration of the cigar-smoking Doctor Lucius Tipton. Scientist, atheist, a man with a breadth of intellect and a depth of heart, Lucius has frequently defied St. Elmo's pieties, and does so again, falling in love with Ruth. As their affections deepen, Lucius enters into the lives of Ruth's contentious brood: six children whose destinies take them in very different directions, some to tragedy. A complex novel of revelation and rebellion, These Latter Days explores the ways in which families root us, ground us, and compel us to seek freedom.
Reviews “I love all Kalpakian's books, so I was not surprised to love this one. This one introduces Ruth Douglas, a strong and independent matriarch, and her turn-of-the century Western family. It includes great humor, wit, masterful storytelling, and yes, some history, too. Full of rich characters you will remember for a long time, I hated for this book to end . . . but thankfully she has written American Cookery which continues the Douglas saga into the late 20th century. If you love the great modern-day storytellers like Pat Conroy, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, John Irving, etc., you will love Kalpakian's work, the novels as well as the short stories.” “A book that lingers in the heart.” “The plot . . . is embellished by fine, grim details of turn-of-the-century American frontier life.”
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