Alistair Dodley, an English emigrant, dies in a mining disaster outside Kellogg, Idaho, in 1924, leaving his wife with four mouths to feed, including their twin boys and four-year-old daughter, Doreen. Doreen, who endures the withering criticism of her mother, grows up shy but intelligent in what is essentially a non-religious home. A classmate at school even accuses her of being a "Christ hater." She longs to escape to a better world with expanded opportunities. Her aunt, a practicing Mormon, helps her. Ruth Conrad, a Mormon girl, loses her high school sweetheart first to a Church mission in...

Alistair Dodley, an English emigrant, dies in a mining disaster outside Kellogg, Idaho, in 1924, leaving his wife with four mouths to feed, including their twin boys and four-year-old daughter, Doreen. Doreen, who endures the withering criticism of her mother, grows up shy but intelligent in what is essentially a non-religious home. A classmate at school even accuses her of being a "Christ hater." She longs to escape to a better world with expanded opportunities. Her aunt, a practicing Mormon, helps her. Ruth Conrad, a Mormon girl, loses her high school sweetheart first to a Church mission in...