“You actually saw where we’re going, President Young?” Emily asked.

Brigham leaned forward, his gray-blue eyes filled with a strange intensity. “It was a marvelous thing. I was shown a large valley a very large valley. It was as though it were a grand panorama and I could look down upon the whole of it. Somehow I knew that it was in the midst of the Rocky Mountains and that it was our new home. And as I gazed upon it, I knew that it was large enough to hold our people. I was also given to know that it is far enough away from civilization that we shall be free from our enemies. No mobs will come in the night to burn property and whip and kidnap our people as they have everywhere else. It will be a place of safety and refuge. There we will build our homes, and there we will make a city.”

“Westward, ho!” is the cry in So Great a Cause, volume 8 of the series The Work and the Glory. This installment depicts the early part of one of the most engaging chapters in Church history, the great migration west, and interwoven with that epic story is the continuing saga of the fictional Steed family.

It is early 1846, and many Saints, including most of the Steeds, begin the difficult journey across Iowa as they move toward a new and distant home in the Rocky Mountains. Among them is the volatile Joshua Steed, who, intent on accompanying his now widowed mother, has temporarily left his wife and children behind in Nauvoo. With trouble brewing in that dying city, will they be in danger? And what is the secret that Joshua feels compelled to keep hidden from the other Steeds?

Meanwhile, Will and Alice continue their voyage with another group of Saints aboard the ship Brooklyn. Life-threatening storms, deaths at sea, a visit to beautiful tropical islands — these become part of their experiences as the sailing vessel makes its way around South America and back up toward California. Also headed for California is the company in which Peter and Kathryn are traveling — the famous and ultimately ill-fated Donner-Reed party.

Against this backdrop of sweeping historical events, the personal drama of the Steed family reaches new levels of emotional and spiritual power, leaving readers with an abiding appreciation for the early Saints’ commitment to “so great a cause.”