This book goes over a lot of memorable Church history--the Saints leaving New York and heading to Kirtland, the Saints being forced out of Jackson County, Zions Camp, the dedication of the Kirtland Temple. I was distracted again in this book by the randomly inserted pages of historical information that Lund decided to put in, and I wanted it to feel more streamlined and more of a natural part of the story instead of how it was put in. And I was distracted by the number of editing and spelling errors there were in the book. Where was Lund's editor? But in all seriousness, the Steed family saga is what keeps this story alive. It's hard not to get attached to them when you read about them. I was bugged by Benjamin's baptism story, how he was so anti-Mormon in the first book and totally unwilling to even think about going to Kirtland at the beginning of this book, but within a couple hundred pages he shifted completely and was willing to be baptized just because of having a conversation with Joseph Smith (who he despised in the last book)? I just felt like it was way too neat and unbelievable. I feel like he should have had to work a little more for his testimony--there wasn't any evidence of him studying or trying to find out or believe for himself. I do really love getting all this Church history from a historical fiction perspective. It makes it so much easier to understand why this was all so hard. And it almost makes it hard to understand why people stayed. It was so hard for so many reasons, and it just keeps being hard over and over and over again, in so many different ways. And that is the beauty of books, to help you see things you haven't experienced on your own.
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