The second volume of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days is now available for purchase. The digital version is also available for free in the Church History section of the Gospel Library app.
“I was in tears four different times reading a hundred pages,” he said. “I don’t [usually] read and get in tears, but I was in tears because I just feel so deeply about our faith and our Church history. And what the members . . . [and] leaders of the Church have done is just incredible.”
Volume 1, which has sold half a million print copies and has more than 1 million digital views since its release in 2018, tells the story of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, beginning in 1815 with Joseph Smith’s childhood. It concludes with the Saints worshipping in the Nauvoo Temple in 1846.
Volume 2, No Unhallowed Hand, 1846–1893, picks up where volume 1 left off. The second volume begins with thousands of Latter-day Saints fleeing mobs in Nauvoo, their gathering place for the previous seven years. Readers follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles west across prairie and plain, witnessing their trust that God has prepared a home for them beyond the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
Their quest for a new home is only the beginning of the story. As they serve God and build a new gathering place in the intermountain West, the exiled Saints encounter new obstacles. Stalwart women and men work together to create communities where the faithful can gather near and worship in temples built to glorify God and redeem the living and the dead. At the same time, hundreds of missionaries journey to faraway lands—England and Denmark, South Africa and the Pacific Islands—to invite others to follow Jesus Christ and help establish Zion.
Saints, which will eventually feature four volumes, is the third multivolume official history produced by the Church. Joseph Smith commissioned and oversaw the writing of the first Church history in the 1830s, and it was published beginning in 1842. The second history was published in 1930 by Assistant Church Historian B. H. Roberts before Church membership had reached 1 million.
Order your physical copy of Saints: Volume 2 here.
This news release was provided by the Church Newsroom.
Aleah is a graduate of Southern Virginia University, where she studied English, Creative Writing, and Dance. She now works full time as a marketing and product manager, writer, and editor. She currently hosts the podcast “Single to the Glory” about singlehood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aleah served a mission in California and loves baking, Lang Leav poetry, Gaynor Minden pointe shoes, and Bollywood movies.
