'Sacred Stone' — a story of faith

SACRED STONE: The Temple at Nauvoo, Heidi S. Swinton, Covenant, $29.95, 166 pp.

Nauvoo, the swamp. Nauvoo, the beautiful. Nauvoo, the troubled, the persecuted, the abandoned.

Nauvoo, the city built on the banks of the Mississippi River by Mormon pioneers in the early 1840s, was all that and more. But above all else, says Heidi Swinton, it was Nauvoo, the city of Joseph's temple.

"The real story of Nauvoo is the story of building a temple. Saints gathered to Nauvoo by divine command to build the temple. The economic structure of the town embraced the practice of tithing one day in 10 to temple labor . . . . Nauvoo was a Mormon town; and the centerpiece of Mormon worship — as taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith and elaborated by President Brigham Young — was clearly the temple."

The story of that remarkable building is told in "Sacred Stone: The Temple at Nauvoo," which is a companion piece to a documentary, "Sacred Stone: Temple on the Mississippi," by Lee Groberg, which will be shown on PBS this fall. The book was released to coincide with the open house and dedication of the rebuilt temple (footage of which will be included in the film).

Swinton does an excellent job of putting the Nauvoo temple in context — in world religious history, in Mormon history and in American history.

With the temple as a central focus, she discusses the events that unfolded in and around Nauvoo during the construction period — from the gathering of the saints, to the persecution, to the death of Joseph Smith and the forced evacuation of the city.

She details the methods and processes of construction. And in a series of well-placed sidebars contrasts that with modern construction.

Throughout, she quotes diaries and writings of Nauvoo citizens. From their words, you get a clear sense of what the building meant to the saints, how it was worth any sacrifice.

And she quotes a variety of historians — both LDS and non-LDS — to show how historical perspective has strengthened that meaning.

"It was both the project of building the temple and the experiences spiritually within it that was the glue of the community and that also took them across the plains," notes BYU professor emeritus Truman G. Madsen.

As Brigham Young said: "We completed the temple, used it a short time, and were done with it. On the 5th and 6th of February, 1846, we committed the building into the hands of the Lord, and left it."