As a young woman Mary Ann Cato left England with Charles Dana, her husband to be, not knowing that she would be one of four women to marry him on the same day when they arrived in Salt Lake City in 1857, ten years after the first Mormon pioneers had entered the Valley. Through the eyes of her daughter, Nellie Dana Thomas, we experience the trials of Mary Ann's early married years-sharing a small house with three sister-wives, a move south during the Utah War, the death of her first child, her first winter on the farm in a dugout-followed by years of mixed prosperity and adversity-the birth of children, happy memories of farm life, plagues of grasshoppers and crickets, Charles' early death, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, a second marriage as a plural wife, another child, the early death of her second husband, followed by the death of a beloved young daughter, Utah's statehood, peaceful later years. Nellie, ever the schoolteacher, tells the story simply and gracefully, as if narrating it to a granddaughter. It is a story of trial and triumph, told with love, candor, admiration, and respect.