The Glovemaker

The Glovemaker won the 2020 WILLA Literary Award in Historical Fiction and was a finalist for the Western Writers of America's 2020 Spur Award for Best Western Historical Fiction, the 2019 David J. Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction, and the 2019 Association for Mormon Letters Award for Novel. In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is worried.

Deborah lives in Junction, a small town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world, even regarded with suspicion by the Mormon faithful who question the depth of their belief.

When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a federal marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. The man, a devout Mormon, is on the run from the US government, which has ruled the practice of polygamy to be a felony. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn't subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons with their long tradition of persecuting believers of her wider faith.

But all is not what it seems, and Deborah and her husband's step-brother, Nels Anderson, are faced with life-and-death decisions that question their faith, humanity, and both of their futures.