The Shelter of Each Other
Richmond’s novel is a journal of sorts, covering 1853 to 1858, when Charles Blancher Thompson (Father Ephraim) relocated his schismatic sect of Latter-Day Saints to Preparation, Iowa, and founded Jehovah’s Presbytery of Zion. In 1850, Keziah Sirrine’s husband left on a mission and sold the house out from under her. Now penniless, and the group’s only midwife and healer, she has little choice but to uproot and follow. To leave the sect is to be accused of apostasy and heresy. New member Duncan Ross helps dig and pack her efficacious plants and creates her new fenced garden in Preparation. Keziah is neither widowed, divorced, nor single in the eyes of her church, so she cannot follow her heart where Duncan is concerned, but this is, nevertheless, a slow-burn romance.
Richmond is a skilful writer, but her poignant account would benefit from being shorter. The later birthing scenes run together, following upon one another with increasing speed, while it is difficult to track who is who. Keziah and Duncan are the sect’s symbolic representations of logic, clear-headedness and peace; a stabilising influence on a fractious community which, as all except Ephraim must practice self-sacrifice, tips inexorably towards anger and violence. Adding to the Mormon rejection of hot drinks, the increasingly dogmatic Ephraim enforces vegetarianism, although his motives are suspect. The meat they farm is economically advantageous to him. Keziah and Duncan’s sole concerns, however, are the congregation’s health and well-being.
The novel offers an understanding of why women choose such a restrictive patriarchal existence, dutifully following God’s appointed agent who openly steals from them. The hardscrabble life is vividly portrayed and does much to illuminate the female role―resilience, fortitude, camaraderie―and the contribution to nature’s rebirth and renewal. Recommended for its insight into a historical monogamous division of the Mormon faith.
