Content Warning: This section of the novel contains anti-Indigenous slurs and bias.

The novel shifts to a third-person narrator and flashes back in time several decades.

Decades earlier, in an arid Western region of North America that the novel calls the Great Alkali Plain, the land is barren and inhospitable. A thin, weathered man and a young girl of five are on the verge of dying of thirst and starvation. The rest of their party—including her parents—have all died. They decide to pray before lying down to sleep.

While they sleep, a huge caravan approaches from a distance. These travelers are led by hardened men with riffles. One of the men spots something up on a rocky crag. Fearing it could be a group of Indigenous people, he takes a group of men to investigate. They discover the destitute man and child, who are so exhausted they do not wake until the buzzards stalking them screech and flee. At first, the man believes he must be having delusions, but the rescue is real.

The starving man introduces himself as John Ferrier; he has decided that the girl is now his adopted daughter, Lucy. In the caravan are Mormons looking for refuge from persecution. Ferrier and Lucy are taken to the Mormon leader and prophet, Brigham Young, who is about 30 years old and resolutely serious.