
The second volume of the Church’s official history, Saints: No Unhallowed Hand, 1846-1893 was released this Wednesday. I just finished blitzing through the book and wanted to share my thoughts on the volume. These official histories walk a tightrope, balancing a lot of goals at one time. This volume, for example, covers approximately 50 years of well-documented history in less than 700 pages in ways that are open, accurate, and truthful while remaining faith promoting and doing so in an engaging and readable manner. That’s a tall order to achieve all those requirements at one time. Having finished reading it, however, I can say that I am pleased overall with the end results and enjoyed reading the book. Volume 2 of the series covers the years 1846-1893. This is the time period when Latter-day Saints left the Midwestern United States en masse and settled the arid region of the Great Basin. Missionaries went abroad throughout the world and converts worked to immigrate to Utah to join their fellow Saints, make the desert blossom as a rose, and build temples. Along the way, the difficult issue of plural marriage challenged the faithful, both because it was difficult to embrace the principle and because of stringent opposition from the federal government of the United States of America. The book explores these narratives through the eyes of individuals who lived at those times, with individuals like Louisa Barnes Pratt, George Q. Cannon, Jane…