House of Card

The settlement of the prairies gave an unanticipated boost to religious freedom in Canada. The pressing need for farmers and workers to cultivate and populate the West overcame the scruples of a Protestant elite and led to group settlements of Mennonites, Ukrainian Catholics, Jews, and Russian Doukhobors. The religious historian Brooke Kathleen Brassard urges us not to overlook the Mormons in the throng of newcomers who seized the chance to make a life and practise faiths that challenged straitlaced Anglos.

No one would confuse Thirsty Land into Springs of Water with the musical The Book of Mormon: this is a thorough but rather dry account of how the Latter‑day Saints settled on the lands that are now Alberta and came to consider themselves Canadian. Written by a respectful outsider to the faith, it is short on jokes. Yet Brassard’s sober narrative is nonetheless an absorbing one, reminding us of the relative ease with which even the most fervent...