Val Rust’s new book, Radical Origins: Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors seeks to understand the first members of Joseph Smith’s unique movement and what might predispose them to join such a “radical” group. Rust searches for answers in the ancestry of early converts, arguing that those who came before influenced the beliefs and practices of the first Mormons.

Morgan Brent Adair, Armand L. Mauss, Robert A. Rees, Don Stringham, Val D. Rust