not recommended....

...this depressing book I have been reading. I do read a lot. Partially due to not watching TV, which I try my best to avoid - though when I am in a place, like Dr. office waiting room, where it is on, seeing the news scrolling by, it can be really mesmerizing. Which is part of the reason I deliberately avoid: it can consume so much time.

This book, on CD, from the library, is so depressing, I don't know why I am still listening. And have decided to return it unfinished. When I got, to check out reading material, I will usually get two or three 'talking books' as well as several hardbacks. This particular book: "True Sisters" by Sandra Dallas is such a heart-wrenching story I'm sure she did not make it up - but so distressing I am not sure it needed to be told long after it actually occurred.

Like someone unearthing a mystery from the past and trying to research enough to put the puzzle pieces together. Resolving some confounding unsolved crime... without the crime part. These people are Mormon converts, from Scotland and England, who have been persuaded to travel to Utah, where they have been lead to believe that a marvelous future awaits those who will uproot and go to live in the Salt Lake Valley. But first you have to get there: selling everything you own, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, traveling across the continent to the Land of Zion. They are pulling handcarts with their few earthly possessions, dragging their undernourished selves, poorly clad, worn out shoes, inadequate clothing, bread and water rations across the plains. Then the seasons change, and here they go, expecting to get over the mountains as winter approaches.

The elders, leaders of groups of one hundred families, are constantly telling them to lighten their loads in the carts and setting the discards on fire to keep them from going back to retrieve treasured mementoes or valuable items. The elders are also responsible for seeing that the groups is fed, but the supplies they are expecting are either nonexistent or inadequate. Women are giving birth in the dirt, to babies they don't have the resources to nurse. The men are digging mass graves every night. It's starting to snow, and they trudge on.

This is so distressing, I am not finishing it. So if you want to know how it ends, if any survive to get to the Salt Lake Valley, you are on your own. If it were a movie, I would be so disturbed, I will get up and walk out, ask for my money back. I don't see any hope for a happy ending, so I am quitting...