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Book Review
| Castle Valley America: Hard Land, Hard-Won Home. By Nancy Taniguchi. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004. ix + 655 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, index. $49.95, cloth; $29.95, paper.)
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Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s and 1960s, I often visited my relatives in Utah's Carbon and Emery counties. Even then I viewed the area—known as Castle Valley country—and its people as different from my own. Later, as I began to explore Utah's past, I realized my youthful assessment was correct. In terms of its geography, ethnicity, resources, and economic patterns these counties constitute a unique part of Utah's larger landscape. In this ambitious account, Nancy Taniguchi captures the sweep of historical forces that have marked this area. |
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Drawing on thirty years of residence and research, Taniguchi's study—based on a wide array of written and oral sources, as well as her previous work—not only expands our understanding of Castle Valley, but places it within the larger patterns of the story of the American West. Moreover, as she understands, Castle Valley challenged Utah historians because it was settled "too late to be part of the usual Mormon pioneer story," and its land and resources were "too different to fit into the sweeping generalizations with which Utah is usually characterized" (pp. 1–2). |
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