Scripture & Story
The verse, word for word. Then what it was like to be there.
In the Book of Mormon novels, every chapter opens with the verse it lives inside, exactly as written. Where the record is silent, the story fills in the people who were there.
Scripture1 Nephi 2:4
And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness.
StoryBook 1, Chapter 6, “Into the Wilderness”
Sariah's fingers find the lead rope before she is fully awake, the rough fiber familiar against her palm in the gray before dawn. Her free hand holds her shawl closed against the cold. She is forty-eight years old, and this is the last morning she will wake inside these walls. She stands in the courtyard of the house that has been hers for thirty years and looks at the gate.
She counts her children as she has counted them every morning since they were born.