The Work and the Glory (578 page)

In many ways, volume 9 will be significantly different from previous volumes. For one thing, most of this volume covers a people on the move. Any sense of permanence is gone. Even when they stop to build cabins and houses, there is no purpose but to make shelter until it is time to move again. Canvas and open sky become the norm now. The days are counted in miles and landmarks. The nights are spent preparing for the next day’s march.

In some ways—particularly from the perspective of a novelist—the story of Brigham Young’s Pioneer Company of 1847 is anticlimactic. After Iowa, it is almost deadly dull. There are no deaths. No battles. No tragedies. They moved forward with endless monotony across a thousand miles of plains and deserts and mountains, with nothing more exciting happening than having to ferry across the river or lock the wagon wheels when they went down a particularly sharp decline. But this is exactly what Brigham hoped for. This was the result of his months of careful planning and preparation. In the novel, whole blocks of days are completely skipped because there is not much to say except that they kept moving on. So complete and thorough were President Young’s preparations that not until 1856, when the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies left very late in the season, would any real tragedy strike the Mormon pioneer trains, even though thousands upon thousands would follow across the trail blazed by the Pioneer Company.

Divergence and convergence. Separation and reunion. The Pioneer Company. The Mormon Battalion. The Donner-Reed Party. The
Brooklyn
Saints. The Big Company. Each has its own unique part to play in the gathering, and the Steeds will be swept up in grand events just as they have been so many times before. In volume 9, it has been twenty years since Joseph and Hyrum Smith came to the Steed farm in Palmyra, New York, to help clear the land. The family then consisted of Benjamin, Mary Ann, and their five surviving children. Now the family has swelled to almost forty people. Now the third generation of Steeds begins to come forth to take part in the great saga of finding a place of refuge in the Rocky Mountains. It will not be an easy task. It will demand sacrifice and separation. It will take determination and dedication. It will require that covenants take precedence over convenience. But when it is done, the family—along with so many others—will be able to say without hesitation or reservation, “All is well.”

With the completion of volume 9, the series known as
The Work and the Glory
will come to a close for a time. Personally, it will have covered ten years of my life. As previously noted in the preface to volume 8, Kim Moe and I signed our agreement to begin working on this project in November 1988. Perhaps it was just as well that neither of us could foresee that the project on which we embarked with such bold naivete would still be going a full ten years later. Sadly, Kim did not live to see it come to fruition. He died of cancer in October 1996.

Having finished volume 9, I am going to set the series aside for a time. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, with the arrival of the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley, the Restoration era comes to a close. What follows is a period of isolation in which the Church is given time to consolidate, grow, and strengthen its roots. From there, it moves step by step until it becomes what we see today, a worldwide kingdom experiencing remarkable growth and global recognition. Those are exciting eras too, but my desire was to tell the story of the Restoration. (As a side note, it even feels to me as though the Steeds are saying, “All right. We’ve let you into our lives for these twenty years. Now we’d like a little time to ourselves.”)

A second reason for stopping for a time now is that for ten years I have had to put many other projects and assignments on hold in order to produce one book in the series each year. After that long, it is time to step back, take a breath, and catch up on some other things. Then, after a time, I would like to finish the series by writing another volume that jumps forward approximately one hundred and fifty years to take a look at the descendants of the Steeds in the closing years of this century. From the beginning, Kim Moe had strong feelings that we needed to tell our readers what it’s like to be a Latter-day Saint in the modern world. Before his death, I committed to Kim that once I got the Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, I would take some time off but then would complete the series by doing something with the Steeds in modern times.

I look forward to that. I have already started a file of ideas that I would like to include in that volume. Like Kim, I feel strongly that it is a story that needs to be told. A century and a half in time will have elapsed. We will have moved from the world of wagons and carts to a world of jetliners, automobiles, and the Internet. We will have gone from an age of faith to an age of high tech and low morals and widespread self-indulgence. Yet it is my deep conviction that the gospel of Jesus Christ, restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, provides the answers to our age and our dilemmas and our challenges just as it did for those early Saints whom Benjamin and Mary Ann Steed and their family are intended to represent.

As the series comes to a close for a time, I should once again like to thank those who have played such an important part in taking this project from concept to reality. First and foremost I would like to thank my wife, Lynn, who has been not only my untiring partner over ten years of effort and sacrifice but also my first reader and most-valued critic. Though she herself would deny this, her mark—though not visible—is found throughout the series. As mentioned several times before, without Kim Moe’s vision and dogged commitment to the importance of this project, I would likely have continued doing other things with my writing for some time to come and this series would not have moved forward as it has. His wife, Jane, continues on with the work, as determined to see it through as Kim was during his life.

Russell Orton, president of Bookcraft, now retired, along with Cory Maxwell, editorial manager at Bookcraft, saw almost instantly the potential for the series while I was still struggling to make volume 1 a reality. Not only did Russell’s support and vision make him a valued associate, but through it all he and his wife, Ann, became treasured friends.

Kristin Johnson—whose work on the Donner-Reed Party entitled
“Unfortunate Emigrants”: Narratives of the Donner Party
was especially valuable—also provided important consultation and many helpful suggestions on the manuscript. Her help has increased the accuracy of the references to that important group. There are many others who have been mentioned before in previous volumes—historians, designers, artists, editors, researchers, marketing personnel, secretaries, and readers. Each one could—though none of them ever will—easily step forward and say, “I had a hand in the success of this project.”

Last of all I should like to thank them whose work and glory is the subject of the series. Before I ever began, I had a testimony of the Father and the Son and of their great, ever-watchful love and concern for each of us. I knew about and loved the Prophet Joseph Smith. I had a strong conviction that the restoration of the Church and the gospel on the earth was one of the most significant events in all of human history. All of that I knew and knew it strongly.

Now, after ten years of constantly pouring over the sources, of reading and rereading, of checking and cross-checking, of trying to wiggle into the heads of these great people who made the Restoration a reality, my testimony has deepened beyond my greatest expectations. The work of the restored Church is God’s work, and from it comes his glory. Of that there is not the slightest shadow of doubt.

Recently I came across a statement by Joseph F. Smith, sixth President of the Church, that epitomizes what I have come to know and feel after ten years of writing this series. He said: “The hand of the Lord may not be visible to all. There may be many who can not discern the workings of God’s will in the progress and development of this great latter-day work, but there are those who see
in every hour and in every moment
of the existence of the Church, from its beginning until now, the overruling, almighty hand of Him who sent His Only Begotten Son to the world to become a sacrifice for the sin of the world” (in Conference Report, April 1904, p. 2; emphasis added).

Gerald N. Lund

Bountiful, Utah

September 1998

Characters of Note in This Book

The Steed Family

•Mary Ann Morgan, widow of Benjamin Steed, and mother and grandmother; not quite sixty as the story opens.

•Joshua, the oldest son (thirty-nine), and his wife, Caroline Mendenhall (almost forty).

William (“Will”), from Caroline’s first marriage (twenty-two), and his wife, Alice Samuelson (nineteen).

Savannah; nine.

Charles Benjamin; six.

Livvy Caroline; two years old as the book opens.

•Jessica Roundy Garrett (forty-two), Joshua’s first wife, widow of John Griffith, and her husband, Solomon Garrett  (forty-one).

Rachel, from marriage to Joshua; fourteen.

Luke and Mark, sons from John Griffith’s first marriage;  thirteen and eleven, respectively.

John Benjamin, from marriage to John; eight.

Miriam Jessica, from marriage to Solomon; almost three.

Solomon Clinton; fourteen months.

•Nathan, the second son (thirty-seven), and his wife, Lydia McBride (about the same age).

Joshua Benjamin (“Josh”); fifteen.

Emily; not quite fourteen.

Elizabeth Mary; eight.

Josiah Nathan; five.

Nathan Joseph (called Joseph); nearly three.

Patricia (Tricia) Ann; just over two months as the book opens.

•Melissa, the older daughter (thirty-five), and her husband,  Carlton (“Carl”) Rogers (thirty-six).

Carlton Hezekiah; fourteen.

David Benjamin; almost twelve.

Caleb John; nearly ten.

Sarah; seven.

Mary Melissa; almost two.

•Rebecca, the younger daughter (twenty-eight), and her husband, Derek Ingalls (twenty-eight).

Christopher Joseph; seven.

Benjamin Derek; four.

Leah Rebecca; fifteen months.

•Matthew, the youngest son (almost twenty-six), and his wife, Jennifer Jo McIntire (twenty-four).

Betsy Jo; four.

Emmeline; fifteen months.

•Peter Ingalls, Derek’s younger brother (twenty-two), and his wife, Kathryn Marie McIntire, Jennifer Jo’s sister (twenty).

Note: Deceased children are not included in the above listing.

The Smiths

* Lucy Mack, the mother.

* Mary Fielding, Hyrum’s widow.

* Emma Hale, Joseph Smith’s widow.

Others

* Samuel Brannan, leader of the group that sailed to California on the
Brooklyn.

* Jim Bridger, famous mountain man and trapper.

* William Clayton, an English convert; clerk to Brigham Young and an accomplished musician.

* George and Jacob Donner, well-to-do farmers from Springfield, Illinois, who decide to go to California in 1846.

* Heber C. Kimball, friend of Brigham Young’s and a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* Orson Pratt, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* Parley P. Pratt, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* James Reed, wealthy businessman who heads for California with the Donner brothers and his own family.

* Willard Richards, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* George A. Smith, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* John Sutter, Swiss emigrant and founder of Sutter’s Fort in Upper California.

* John Taylor, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* Wilford Woodruff, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

* Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and head of the Church; forty-five as the novel opens.

Though too numerous to list here, there are many other actual people from the pages of history who are mentioned by name in the novel. James and Drusilla Hendricks, Ezra T. Benson, Thomas Rhoads and family, Levinah Murphy, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, and many others mentioned in the book were real people who lived and participated in the events described in this work.