• Dramatic re-telling of a terrible but little-known tragedy: In 1856, 220 Mormons traveling west to Utah, pushing and pulling their belongings in handcarts, died of malnutrition and hypothermia. Roberts draws on contemporary letters and diaries to re-create the drama and suffering.

• A powerful indictment of Brigham Young: Young had been warned that the pilgrims were at risk from winter storms; he could have waited until the next year or sent aid eastward sooner but failed to do so until it was too late. Not only have Young’s biographers ignored or minimized this tragic and preventable event, they’ve tacitly accepted the official version of the story, which casts it as an unavoidable act of God that tested—and proved—the faith and steadfastness of the Mormon spirit.

• Follows the success of other books about the Mormons: Devil’s Gate will appeal to the same readers that made Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven and Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s The Mormon Murders into explosive, national bestsellers.

""Devil's Gate is the chilling story of the greatest disaster in the history of American westward settlement: the Mormon handcart tragedy. With meticulous research and elegant writing, Roberts tells a gripping story of impoverished Europeans brought to the New World with a promise of hope, who died in the wilderness of the American West under the most appalling circumstances. It is more than just history: it is an indictment of fundamentalism itself. This book is proof that people who are serenely certain they know the mind of God are not only presumptuous, they are dangerous. Devil's Gate is a book of history with an important message for the modern world."" -- Douglas Preston, author of Blasphemy and The Monster of Florence