Knowing miracles

Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows my History brings to life the plight of early nineteenth-century migrant families living with poverty, debt, backbreaking work on barren soil, and an overwhelming sense of diminution. Self-styled evangelicals, many from New England, struggled to keep families unbroken and in the faith. Joseph Smith set himself apart. He shared the world of pious frontier immigrants, intuitively understood their yearnings, and led them to imagine a new order.