An Epic Family History from 1815 to 1935

In 1815, an illegitimate blacksmith's son was born in Bristol, England, carrying his mother's name because there was no other name available. Two hundred years later, his great-great-grandson lives on the Pacific coast of North America.

Between those two facts lies everything.

What the Iron Holds follows four generations of the Francom family across three continents and eight decades—from the red dust of Uitenhage in the Cape Colony to the Atlantic crossings, the thousand miles on foot across the American plains, the Black Hawk raids, the polygamy underground, the Colorado River in January, and the quiet Utah bench-land where a family finally stopped moving and started building something that would last.

Drawn from the journals of William and Amy Francom, the memoirs of Samuel Francom, and the family histories preserved by their descendants, this is the story of people who crossed every distance the nineteenth century could put in front of them—and of the iron they carried with them, and the houses they built from the earth they claimed, and the ledgers they kept so that the ones who came after them would know what the distance had cost.

Some things a man builds outlast him. Some don't. The record of what he did outlasts everything else.