Trivia – There are a couple of scenes which I intend to include in the book that you haven’t read yet. One of these deals with Melissa Lott becoming one of the wives of Joseph Smith after the events of August 1843. It was only recently that I realized Melissa got to the valley several days before Jonathan, and that Melissa’s father was the un-named individual who told Mary Fielding Smith she was unprepared to travel west and would be nothing but a burden on the company. Mary predicted that she would reach the valley before this un-named individual (Cornelius Lott), and by the intervention of God, her prediction came true.

My muse originally objected to me calling the fort “the Old Fort.” He was right. It was in researching the fort in response to his objection that I discovered the details about its sod construction, the damage the spring rains did to the structure, and the tales of the rodent infestations, where the movement of the rodents would cause the floors and walls to shake, there were so many of them. In the aftermath of the recent Brood X emergence (of 17-year locusts), Fairfax county experienced a striking increase in the local rodent population. So all the pieces were in place to connect the rodents with the cricket plague of May 1848.