This handy travel book begins a six-volume series of guide books to early Latter-day Saint historic sites. Under the general editorship of BYU professor emeritus of Church history and doctrine LaMar C. Berrett, the intent of the Sacred Places series is to provide a tool for those who wish to visit the sites where the seminal events of the Restoration took place. “Sacred Places endeavors to bring the history and geography of the early period of the Church to life” and to “function as a resource for academic historians and amateur Church history enthusiasts alike” (vii).
Volume one covers historic sites in all six New England states and eastern Canada including Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces. Three of the authors are professors of Church history and doctrine at BYU, and all have researched and written extensively on nineteenth-century Mormon history.
Each chapter includes a general road map of the state or province under consideration and a discussion of specific places and persons relevant to Mormon history in that region. Another valuable feature is the occasional reference to an American history site that provides vacationers information on other places to visit while on their Mormon history tours (for example, Revolutionary War sites in and around Boston). The reader will also find especially valuable more than a dozen additional detailed maps of specific towns, townships, or farm sites and more than eighty photographs that include both contemporary and historic views of sites as well as selected portraits of Saints who made the sites important. Also included is a bibliography of sources cited and a valuable index of personal names and places.
The five subsequent volumes of the Sacred Places series will include separate volumes devoted to New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, and finally Wyoming and Utah. These volumes are scheduled to appear every six to twelve months during the next three years.
