Trail of Hope: Story of the Mormon Trail

Bill Slaughter and Mike Landon did an excellent job researching and telling the story of Mormon pioneers' challeges as they moved to the west to develop a new area.

In the early-1800s, the Mormon Church--or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it's formally called--was founded when a young man named Joseph Smith, not even twenty years old, produced a book he said had been translated with divine help from an ancient record found buried on a hill near his family's New York farm. The book, "The Book of Mormon," told the story of two cultures, the Nephites and the Lamanites, that lived in the Americas during the time of Christ, and claimed that Jesus had appeared to those cultures after his resurrection. (Many Mormons believe today's Native Americans are the descendants of those cultures.) Joseph Smith said he received the book after he prayed to find out which church to join, and that God and Jesus Christ appeared to him themselves and told him not to join any of them. The Mormon Church grew quickly, with Joseph Smith as its leader, but as it grew, it gained enemies. People resented Joseph Smith's claims, covered him in tar and feathers, and violently tormented his followers. The Mormons moved from place to place: to Ohio, to Missouri, and to Illinois, building settlements and towns, and fleeing when enraged mobs burnt down the Mormons' homes and churches or massacred the Mormon men and boys. The Governor of Missouri went as far as issuing a military order for the complete extermination or deportation of every Mormon within his state. Eventually, Joseph Smith was assassinated by a mob, through the windows of an Illinois prison, where he was being held for ordering the destruction of the printing presses of an anti-Mormon newspaper. Most people thought Joseph's Smith death would be the end of the Mormons, but it merely made him a martyr for his people. Brigham Young, a tough, fiery-tempered man, became the Mormons' second leader--their second prophet--and in the mid-1800s, led the Mormons westward, toward what was then Mexican territory, and is now the state of Utah. The Mormons traveled in covered wagons, or pulled wooden handcarts, and large numbers of them died from cold, hunger, sickness, and Indian attacks. Along the way they built towns and outposts, and gave English names to the mountains and rivers. This book is the story of that journey, and it's a well told account of it. The book is full of beautiful and historic photos, as well as copies of letters and journal entries, and a good narrative that ties it all together and injects new and little known facts into a story familiar to many. This is a great book for any interested in the history of the West. It seems objective, though it comes from a Mormon-owned publishing company, and it's never boring. It's one of the best books on the Mormon pioneers I've ever read, and I recommend it highly.