"A history of the planning and construction of the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which took forty years to build"--

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 and seeks land for them to settle in Missouri. Spring marks the joyful reunion of Delcena and her husband, Lyman, who has been in hiding. But separation looms large...

“Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama—love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets. Cross has written an engaging book.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

In this international bestseller and basis for the 2009 movie of the same name, Donna Woolfolk Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman

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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.

Together with close friends and family members, Scotsman Ian MacBrier takes his wife Wren and troubled sister-in-law Bethia to America, but when tragedy strikes the Scotsman's new faith is sorely tested. His best hope lies in bringing his family safely to the Mormon settlement of Nauvoo.