Forgotten Utah · Debut Novel
The Wooden Sisters
A Novel of Two Utah Pioneer Families, Told in Two Voices
Sold from the same market stall in Cheapside on an autumn morning in 1720, two carved maple dolls were separated before noon — and carried the story of two families across an ocean, a continent, and three centuries of the American West.
Three centuries, two dolls
1720
Cheapside, London
Johann Albrecht carves two maple dolls and sells them within an hour of each other.
1840s
The Crossing
Famine drives the Pollocks out of County Tyrone; the Stevenses push west from the Mohawk Valley.
1846
Nauvoo
The exodus begins across the frozen Mississippi toward Winter Quarters.
1857
Mountain Meadows
A wagon train is destroyed in southern Utah, and both families live in its long shadow.
1924
Castle Gate
An explosion in Carbon County kills 172 miners and reshapes a coal-town generation.
1929
Salt Lake City
De Pollock meets Nedra Stevens, looks at the doll she carries, and names the wooden sisters.
The Author
Steve Pollock
Steve Pollock has taught middle school for twenty-eight years. He loves Utah history, especially the way it connects to the larger story of the American West, and brings that same passion to his writing.
Forgotten Utah is where these books live: novels and short histories about the people, places, and disasters that shaped this state and rarely made it onto the plaque.
More about Steve →The history behind the novel
All entries →1846–1847
The Exodus from Nauvoo
In February 1846, families began crossing the Mississippi out of Nauvoo, Illinois, starting a migration that would end in the Salt Lake Valley.
September 1857
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
An emigrant wagon train bound for California was attacked and roughly 120 men, women, and older children were killed in a mountain valley near present-day Enterprise.
March 8, 1924
The Castle Gate Mine Disaster
A coal dust explosion in Castle Gate Mine No. 2 killed 172 miners, one of the deadliest mining accidents in Utah history.
“Told in two voices — by the dolls themselves — The Wooden Sisters is a novel of faith, endurance, and the quiet persistence of family across three centuries.”
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