Ezekiel Johnson feels like he is losing his family—one by one. It is the 1820s, and years earlier, Ezekiel had fled his abusive stepfather and his loving, yet browbeaten mother—promising he would never return. He vowed that when he had a family they would be bound together in freedom, happiness, and love. But now this strange, new Mormon religion seems to have captured the hearts of his wife and children—in spite of the rumors that surround...

Kirtland, 1838. Among the Saints who remain, Julia Johnson and her children endure the bitter winter in poverty, struggling amidst illness and persecution to prepare to join the leaders of the Church in Far West. Meanwhile, Almon rises as an influential leader among the Canadian Saints, but by the time Almon's company arrives in Far West, the city is nearly under siege, and the lives of many innocent Saints are threatened--including that of the Prophet...

November, 1838. The scattered members of the Johnson family struggle to survive the upheaval that comes in the wake of Governor Boggs's extermination order; faithful Saints mourn the plight of the imprisoned Prophet; and, in Kirkland, family patriarch Ezekiel battles alcoholism and his conflicting emotions of bitterness toward Mormonism and love for his family.