Pioneer Scout John Helper: The Complete Western Trilogy
The Pioneer Scout trilogy is set during the LDS westward exodus (1847-1869) and well described as “three intertwined tales of love, vengeance and the price of belief.” The Wagon Train Murders is set in 1855, on the High Plains trail between Nauvoo, Illinois and the Parting of the Ways in Wyoming, where the southerly route splits from the Oregon Trail. Wagon leader and Mormon bishop Ward Kimball and his brother Ben have travelled this same trail many times, safeguarding their fellow Saints to the Salt Lake Valley. Their camaraderie in all three books is such a treat. Ward is patient and measured. Ben is outspoken with wild suggestions, but there’s humour between them as they parry back and forth. The caravan is joined by a smaller train of Missouri gentiles, which has everyone’s nerves strung tight. Several people are arrow-shot and romance sparks between Mormon scout John Helper and Sarah Boulet, the daughter of a gentile.
The epilogue of The Wagon Train Murders does not match the prologue of Gun ‘Em Down Hard regarding when Ward and Ben Kimball leave Salt Lake, but the saga continues with the main characters and interesting new ones, especially a tough pioneering threesome in a plural marriage. Sarah’s kidnapping has a determined John on the perpetrators’ trail. Events become a bit hectic and disorganised, but it’s a pacy read.
In Moment of Reckoning, John and Sarah are living in Salt Lake, where an unknown person pits their previously friendly neighbours against them. Someone bears them a grudge. Despite good descriptive language, the author sometimes wanders into minutiae. If someone gets tearful, a half-paragraph following the tears to the chin, and beyond, isn’t needed. Sections often begin without names for a few paragraphs, so I didn’t always know which events I was following, as DiCesaris switches between his various narratives. The moments it took me to reorient myself slackened plot tension, and by the end I had several questions about threads and characters that seemed to just fizzle out. Overall, a worthwhile read which will appeal to readers of Western frontier fiction, in particular the daunting 1300-mile Mormon migration trail from Illinois through Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to Utah.
