Talking Location With author Ann Weisgarber – Utah

26th December 2018

#TalkingLocationWith…. Ann Weisgarber, author of The Glovemaker set in in Utah.

What is it with America’s national parks and me?  Years ago, a vacation at Badlands National Park in South Dakota inspired me to write my first novel, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree.  Now it’s happened again.  This time the national park is Capitol Reef in Utah, and the book is The Glovemaker.

Capitol Reef National Park is deep in Utah’s canyon country and the closest town is Torrey, population around 200.  The park is off the beaten track and doesn’t attract crowds.  Admission is on the honor system at the Visitor Center since there isn’t a fee station at the entrance.

During my first vacation at Capitol Reef, my husband and I hiked an eight-mile trail in a dry wash between steep cliffs and didn’t see another person.

One afternoon we picked apples in an orchard that had been planted by settlers in the 1880s.  This is allowed.  The park service keeps ladders propped up against the trees to encourage visitors to enjoy the fruit.

We had a picnic in the orchard and as I munched on an apple, I thought about the people who planted the trees.  Who were they?  Why did they come to such an isolated place?  What were their hopes and dreams as they planted the orchards?

I bought a few books at the Visitor Center and learned that the first white homesteaders were believed to be Nels Johnson and his brother John.  A few other families trickled in and settled on the floor of the canyon where Sulphur Creek and Fremont River converged.  Eventually, they named the town Junction.  (The name was changed later to Fruita.)  By the late 1880s, there were eight families.

Back home in Texas, the vacation long over, I kept digging deeper to find answers to my questions.  I stumbled across the name of a woman who lived in Junction.  She was married, didn’t have any children, and owned twenty acres.  Her husband’s name is in several documents but during the 1880s, he vanished. He isn’t in the census records from 1890 onward. Nor is there a death certificate or gravesite.

What happened to him?  Had he abandoned his wife?  Or did he get lost and perish alone?  Even today in the rough canyon country, any number of things can and do go wrong.

Poring over maps and the books I bought at the Capitol Reef Visitor Center, I learned that during the 1880s, men with plural wives were often arrested and charged as felons. Some men eluded arrest by hiding at Floral Ranch, located in Capitol Reef.

Intrigued, I flew from Houston to Salt Lake City. From there, I drove 224 miles southeast to Capitol Reef where a park ranger told me how to find Floral Ranch. I about fell over when he casually mentioned that some of the buildings were still there.

Ann Weisgarber is the author of The Glovemaker, The Promise, and The Personal History of Rachel DuPree.  She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2014. She lives in Galveston, Texas, where her house is perched on top of 17-foot high pilings and has a view of the Gulf of Mexico.  She spends her spare time reading, visiting national parks, and keeping score at Astros’ baseball games. 

US edition

Connect with Ann on Twitter and do visit her website.  You can of course buy her books through the TripFiction website. The Glovemaker is currently available in Kindle format and you can buy it either through the TripFiction database or from the publisher – the hardback is published at the end of February 2019.

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UK edition

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