Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman's Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail

Jana Richman's memoir is an emotional and witty exploration of faith, history, family, and geography. As she rides her BMW from St. Louis to Utah, following the Mormon Trail pioneered by seven of her eight great-great grandmothers, she seamlessly moves from strand to strand: the story of her road trip, her yearning to understand her own rejection of the faith held dear by her mother, and sufficient historical background about the Trail and the Mormon Church to make sense of her journey. It sounds like a lot to pull off, but she does so with verve. More novelist than historian, Richman nonetheless has done her research. She quotes from the journals of three of those great-great-grandmothers. She retells the history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as she traces the line of that history across the continent. And every time she needs a pithy quote to sum up the experience of those who walked the trail, of the greater historical meaning of the Mormon Exodus, she finds that quote in Wallace Stegner's The Gathering of Zion. Stegner would smile. Here is a smart Mormon woman, writing her way into her past and her very identity, and she finds her best guide in this non-Mormon historian and his book from four decades ago. Richman quotes Stegner on the Mormon handcart companies, in his words the "marathon walk" that was "the true climax of the Gathering, and the harshest testing of both people and organization." Her very next line: "Maybe I'm looking for the twenty-first-century version of `the harshest testing.'" Richman's intimate experience of the immigrant trail moved me. On her motorcycle trip, she touches that history--the history of her own family--and brings it to life. History matters to her. These old stories illuminate her personal journey into the nature of faith in a way that lights up that journey for the reader, as well.

If you're mormon, post mormon, motorcycle enthusiast, westerner, feminist, post feminist, or a reader who just likes a good story, then you'll enjoy this book. Richman writes truthfully about her experience as a new Mormon pioneer - paving her way out of rather than into the Mormon Church. She parallels her solo motorcycle trip from Nauvoo, IL to Salt Lake during the fall of 2001 with the faithful (and fateful) journey her decedents who traveled the Mormon Trail 150 years earlier. The motorcycle metaphors may tire some, but I thought they added to the story. On the whole it is a good story. I felt a connection to her sense of pride in the pioneering spirit of her family side-by-side with her inability to live with such unquestioning faith.

This is a beautifully written book. In lucid and often lyrical prose the author describes her journey along the Mormon trail by motorcycle, following the route from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City taken by several of her female ancestors and, on the way, recounts brief histories of their determination and faith in spite of horrendous obstacles. In parallel, she delves into her own struggle with Mormonism and arrives at a deeper understanding, and a redefinition, of her own faith. As the daughter of a deeply believing Mormon mother and a renegade father ("a jack Mormon") she has a lot to contend with. Her motorcycle becomes the symbol as well as the carrier of her uncertainty. There is enough Mormon history provided to satisfy the casual reader, but the most heartening aspect of her presentation is that it doesn't fall along the usual polarizing lines: Ms. Richman offers both praise and criticism of the Mormon hierarchy and its leaders. The stories of her female ancestors along the trail are often heart-stopping in the intensity of their suffering and the depth of their faith. The book is filled with good writing and acute insights into many of the people she meets along the way. The book left me wanting more. For one thing, by the end her situation is much like her father's - she recognizes how strongly tied she is to Mormonism, though she will never rejoin the church. I wanted the book to provide more insight into her father's character and attitudes as a way of understanding her own. For another, throughout the book her husband (who stays home in Tucson) is described as a perfect man, loving, kind, thoughtful, supportive, insightful - almost too much to believe. At the end of the book they separate, but her only explanation is a bit of hand-waving: there are "philosophical" differences. If he was such a great guy, couldn't he make the changes needed to move with her to Utah? And what are these differences? I'd like to know more about them as a way of understanding her own changes. Perhaps that's another book. For me, the attempt to make her own journey feel as dramatic and harsh as that of the original Saints doesn't ring true. Where her great-great-grandmothers starved, bled and buried children in the snow, the worst she has to contend with are a balky cycle and sadistic truckers. Most nights she finds a hot shower and a warm bed. The spiritual summation in Chapter 21 is a bit talky but effective. She arrives at an idea of faith which comes close to the idea of practice as taught in various forms of Buddhism; and I'd like to see her explore that connection further. Perhaps that too, will come in another book.