OUT OF THE SHADOWS . . . INTO THE LIGHT, by Candace Salima, Spring Creek, 310 pages, $17.95, softcover. This is an LDS novel about Caroline Duncan, who spends years of her life fighting two difficult battles — maintaining the family's ranch and dealing with the kidnapping of her son by her ex-husband. The story is set in Wyoming amid vicious blizzards. She falls in love with a U.S. marshal who is trying to help her retrieve her son.

DAVID O. McKAY: BELOVED PROPHET, by Mary Jane Woodger, Covenant, 271 pages, $16.95, softcover. Woodger, a professor of church history at Brigham Young University, originally wrote this book as a doctoral dissertation. This a biography of one of the best-known LDS prophets, David O. McKay, who presided over the LDS Church for 19 years before passing away at the age of 96. Born and bred in Huntsville, McKay became a prominent educator before being called as an LDS apostle at the age of 32.

FORGET ME NOT, by Michele Ashman Bell, Covenant, 214 pages, $14.95, softcover. A native of St. George, the LDS author has written a novel about Dalton McNamara, a Vietnam veteran who decides to revisit the country where he lost his leg, accompanied by his wife, Paige, and his daughter, Skyler. They are hoping to accomplish a mission of healing and hope.

THE PICTOGRAPH MURDERS, by P. G. Karamesines, Signature, 385 pages, $21.95, softcover. The author, a poet from Payson, focuses in her novel on Alex McKelvey, an "earth-mother type" who decides to join an archaeological dig in southern Utah. When the site's owner disappears, McKelvey finds herself caught in "a whirlwind of pot hunting, witchcraft and murder."

ALASKA'S DAUGHTER, by Elizabeth Bernhardt Pinson, Utah State University Press, 220 pages, $42.95 hardcover; $19.95 softcover. The author has written a memoir of her youth as an Eskimo in Alaska. She grew up near the tiny village of Teller on the Bering Strait. When she was only 6, she lost both legs to frostbite. She kept a journal of her life, culminating in her marriage and move to the state of Washington, where she still lives at the age of 92.

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com