Coyote Moon

Coyote Moon: How a Pioneer Woman Survived a Religious Cult, Personal Heartbreak, and Denied Justice

In June 1862, a cannon blast at a remote Utah fort shatters a young girl's faith and binds her fate to a little‑remembered frontier war. Coyote Moon follows Emma Thompson from immigrant poverty and a breakaway Mormon sect to steamboat dreams, Montana mining towns, and the rough new settlements of Idaho, tracing the quiet revolutions of a woman who keeps surviving when systems and men fail her.

History remembers the prophets, generals, and vigilantes of the American West; Coyote Moon remembers the woman caught in their crossfire. Based on the little-known Morrisite War and the rough-edged world of Idaho, Utah, and Montana Territories, it follows Emma, a shoemaker's daughter, as she leaves a religious cult and an unreliable husband to finally face a courtroom where her deepest beliefs are put on trial. Readers who savor true-to-life women's history will find in Emma a companion they won't soon forget.