She stared at it for a moment, not comprehending. It was a Book of Mormon, but . . . She stood up and moved to Joshua, peering more closely at the book. He held it up so she could see the back of it. There was a soft gasp. There was no mistaking the darkened corner. It was her Book of Mormon.
“I took it,” he said simply. “That day when I stayed behind to dry out the bedding. I saw it there . . .” He thrust it toward her. “I should have said something sooner.”
She was too shocked to move. Finally she forced her gaze away from the book and to his face. His dark eyes were somber and hooded. “You had it all this time?”
“Yes.”
“I . . .” She shook her head. She took it from him and pressed it to her breast. “I’m so glad to find it. Thank you, Joshua.”
“I’m sorry, Lydia. It was wrong of me to do it. It was worse not to let you know when you thought you had lost it. I was going to say something, but then everyone would have known and—”
And then her joy at seeing the book gave way to something else. Her eyes met and held his. “Have you been reading it?”
For a long moment they stood there, eyes locked. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he nodded.
If she had been caught by surprise before, now she was absolutely astonished. “You have? You really have?”
“Lydia, I’m going to ask you not to say anything to anyone about this.”
She turned away for a moment, setting the book down, her thoughts tumbling wildly, and then she swung back. Joshua? It had been he who took her Book of Mormon? “Does Caroline know?”
“No. I just found out last night that Mother guessed that it was me. But no one else knows. Not Caroline. Not Nathan. No one but you and Mama now.”
“But why?” she cried. “Why haven’t you said anything? Of all people, Caroline should— Why now, Joshua?”
“Because Nathan and I are leaving in a few minutes. I’ve kept it long enough.”
The implications of what he was saying began to override her amazement. “Did you finish it?” she asked very softly.
“No.”
“How far did you get?” She was almost whispering, as though she were suddenly in a cathedral.
“I was in the book of Alma.”
“That far!” She clasped her hands together in pleasure. “That’s wonderful, Joshua.” She was still a little dazed. “Why now, Joshua? After all of these years of us trying to get you to read it. Why now?”
He had suspected she would ask him that question. “Partly curiosity, I guess. I look at some of these people—Drusilla Hendricks, Ezra T. Benson. I see what they are willing to go through for their faith.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I’d like to understand it better.”
“And?” she asked after a moment.
He pretended not to understand. “And what?”
She stepped forward and took his arms, then shook him gently. “Tell me, Joshua. What are your feelings about it?”
He had expected this question too and wanted to be honest with her. “I’m not sure. Some of it I like. There are some beautiful things in there. Other times I don’t like what I’m reading, or don’t understand it. I have a lot of questions.”
“Oh, Joshua. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’re actually reading it.” She was so excited now, she shook him again, barely aware that she still held his arms. “What passages did you like?”
He thought for a moment, then answered. “There’s a place where one of them—Nephi, I think—talks about himself, about how he feels.”
“What does he say?”
“He feels like he is unworthy. He talks about how weak he is.”
“Yes,” Lydia breathed. “That is one of my favorite parts of the whole Book of Mormon.”
She retrieved the book, turning the pages quickly, scanning. Then she held it out, pointing to a place on the page. “This?”
He looked, nodded, then took it from her. He read in a low voice, but one that captured all the emotion and pathos that Nephi had tried to express. “ ‘O wretched man that I am; yea, my heart sorroweth, because of my flesh. My soul grieveth, because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which doth so easily beset me.’ ” He closed the book. “That’s the one.”
She snatched the book from him and found the place quickly again. “But don’t stop there, Joshua. Go on.” She held it out, but he didn’t take it. So she read it for him. “ ‘Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.’ ”
He looked away. “I don’t understand what all of it means, but it is beautiful.”
Suddenly Lydia was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Joshua, here I am going on like a young girl. I haven’t even thanked you for telling me.” She waved the book. “And for bringing this back to me. I was so disturbed when I thought I had lost it.”
“I know. I don’t know what possessed me. I guess I was afraid to let—” He stopped, his face troubled now. “Will you not say anything to Caroline? I don’t want to give her any false hopes, Lydia. You know what she’ll think. And then when nothing happens, it will be a bitter disappointment to her.”
“Are you sure nothing will happen?” she asked, trying to make it sound as if she were merely teasing him.
He shrugged. “Joshua Steed getting religion? Doesn’t sound like much of a possibility to me.” Before she could respond to that, he went on. “Will you not say anything, Lydia?”
She nodded slowly. “I won’t tell a soul without your express permission, but I urge you to tell Caroline, Joshua. She needs to know.”
His mouth pulled down into a stubborn line. “Maybe so, but not yet.”
She nodded, not necessarily agreeing, but understanding. “Then at least tell Nathan, Joshua. You’ll have time together over these next few days. Talk to him. If you have questions about what you’re reading, you can ask him.”
There was a droll smile. “You think his heart can withstand that kind of a shock?”
She laughed gaily. “I’d like to find out. Oh, Joshua. I can’t tell you how happy I am.” Then on impulse she thrust the book at him. “I don’t want it back, Joshua.”
“What?”
“Not yet. Take it with you. Without your family these next few days, you’ll have more time to read. Finish it. Then you can bring it back to me.”
“No, I—”
She pressed it into his hand. “Yes! I want you to keep it.” She tossed her head back and laughed. “Besides, if it shows up now, Nathan is going to want to know where I found it. How would I explain that without telling him everything? Please, Joshua.”
He took the book back, looking down at it.
“I’m not asking for any promises, Joshua. There are no expectations. Just take it, okay?”
He smiled sardonically. “I thought I was supposed to pray about it too.” Then, before she could answer, he turned away. “Well, Nathan will be ready to leave. I’d better go. Thank you.”
“Why me, Joshua?”
Again there was that enigmatic shrug. “It’s your book.”
She shook her head immediately. “No. You could have just left it somewhere for me to find.” Now her face filled with wonder. “You wanted to tell me. Why?”
He thought about that for a moment, realizing that he hadn’t really answered that question for himself. “I guess because of all the family, I thought you’d understand more than the others.”
“Yes,” she said softly, remembering back so many years before when Nathan had tried to get her to read this book with the leather cover. “Yes, I do understand, Joshua. And that’s why it’s so important that you keep reading. And that you pray about it. It wasn’t until I read it all the way through and asked Heavenly Father if it was true that I came to know.” She smiled, embarrassed a little by her own fervency. “Who knows, maybe it will come easier for you than it did for me.”
There was a short bark of bitter laughter. “It’s not the same for you, Lydia. You were never . . .” He stopped and looked away.
“I was never what?”
“Never mind. I’d better go before Nathan comes back.”
She grabbed at his arm. “I was never what, Joshua?”
A deep gloom had settled over him. “You were never as bitter as I was.”
“Maybe not, but I was bitter, Joshua. I hated Joseph Smith. Remember that day in Palmyra when the crowd had cornered Emma and was mocking her? I was right there, cheering them on.”
His head came up slowly. “You call that bitterness? How about sticking a pistol in your father’s face and coming so close to pulling the trigger that you still have nightmares about it? Or how about getting blind drunk and beating your wife until she is forced to flee with an infant baby? Were you ever that bitter? Did you ever drive women and children barefoot out of their homes into a winter’s night like I did in Jackson County?” His face was twisted with contempt—self-contempt. His voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Did you have your own brother bullwhipped until his whole body was a mass of bloody flesh?”
Now she understood. How many times had she run her fingers over the scars on Nathan’s back and chest and marveled at the emotions that had driven Joshua that night? She wanted to reach out to Joshua now, to somehow touch his wounds and heal them. But she didn’t know how. She was close to tears now. “You’ve changed, Joshua. That’s not you anymore.”
He shook his head, despair filling his eyes. “If I had changed, Olivia would be here with us now.” And with that, he swung around and plunged out of the tent, leaving her to stare after him in sorrow and wonder.
It was the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred forty-six. In retrospect, it would prove to be one of those years that later historians would label as “pivotal,” “monumental,” “a watershed year.”
It was a year when a poem called “The Raven,” written by a neurotic genius named Edgar Allan Poe, a man who had flunked out of West Point, was being quoted all across the nation; when poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier was being published in the East. West of Boston, a man by the name of Henry David Thoreau dwelt in a small cabin he had built on the shores of what would come to be known to the world as “Walden Pond.” In New York City, a man by the name of P. T. Barnum was shocking society—and making them pay dearly for it—as he displayed what he called “all that is monstrous, scaley, strange, and queer” to vast audiences. A song, “Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue Tail Fly,” was published and quickly became an American folk classic.
At an industrial fair in the nation’s capital, an inventor by the name of Elias Howe demonstrated an amazing new sewing machine that did the same amount of work in a manner of minutes that it took a woman hours to do by hand. And it did it better! The first telegraph lines were strung between Washington and Baltimore. A dentist in Boston, having learned that inhaling a fluid called sulfuric ether rendered one unconscious, became instrumental in establishing its use as an anesthetic for surgical operations. A rotary “lightning press” was patented in New York City that could run ten thousand sheets per hour. A portable, hand-cranked ice-cream freezer was invented by a woman in New Jersey.
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French statesman and philosopher who visited America in 1831, was greatly impressed with the new democracy but noted that Americans were “slaves of slogans.” In 1846, the slogan on everyone’s lips was “Manifest Destiny.” Coined by a New York publisher the year before, Manifest Destiny was a phrase that captured in two words the belief that it was the will of Divine Providence for the American democracy, with its constitutional form of government, to reign from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
At the beginning of 1846, the United States had expanded westward not even half the width of the continent. James K. Polk, a virtual political nobody, rode the wave of Manifest Destiny to the White House with his cry of “54-40 or fight,” a promise to make Oregon Territory part of the United States or go to war with Great Britain. Thankfully, Britain was not in a mood for battle and a compromise was reached giving the U.S. everything south of the 49th parallel, which would eventually include Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and most of Montana. England got to keep everything north of that line, including Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the vast wheat fields of what would become the province of Alberta.
The rest of the western continent—a vast, largely unexplored and unsettled territory—was controlled by Mexico and known as Upper California and New Mexico. Ten years before, the Republic of Texas had won its independence from Mexico by defeating Santa Anna’s forces at San Jacinto. Ever since, the two “nations” bitterly disputed over what constituted the southern border of Texas. Then Texas became a state of the Union, and the border dispute became the concern of the U.S. government. President Polk offered to buy California for $25 million and New Mexico for $5 million, but the offer was refused. Angry, the president ordered a two-thousand-man army into Texas—or Mexico, depending on whose border one accepted. An angry Mexican government sent an army across the Rio Grande. When the brief skirmish was over, eleven Americans were dead.
On May eleventh, an outraged President Polk sent a war message to Congress declaring that Mexico had “shed American blood upon American soil”—a statement of truth only if you accepted the U.S. definition of the border. An outraged Congress passed an act declaring war with Mexico, and on May thirteenth, 1846, the president signed it into law. Once again in its short history the United States of America was at war with a foreign power.
Chapter Notes
The original Book of Mormon was not divided into the chapters and verses found in modern editions, but the scriptures discussed by Lydia and Joshua are now 2 Nephi 4:17–18, 28.
Brigham Young’s vision of the valley described here was reported in the memoirs of John R. Young, son of Lorenzo D. Young. When word of the vision circulated through the camp, John R. recalled, it “formed the most entrancing theme of our conversations, and the national song of Switzerland became our favorite hymn: ‘For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers’ God.’ ” (See CN, 18 May 1996, p. 10.)
John R. Young’s report seems to imply that the vision took place about this time on the trail. President George A. Smith reported that Brigham Young, apparently before the Saints left Nauvoo, had a vision in which he saw Joseph Smith and in which the Prophet showed Brigham what is now known as Ensign Peak, just north of Salt Lake City (see Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854–86], 13:85–86; see also Susa Young Gates, The Life Story of Brigham Young [London: Jarrolds Publishers, n.d.], p. 86). It is unclear whether these reports, that of John R. Young and that of George A. Smith, refer to the same vision or to two separate visions. For the purposes of the novel, it is assumed that the vision referred to by John R. Young took place while the Saints were in Iowa.