A story that includes spiritualist seances, conspiracy, and an important church trial, Wayward Saints chronicles the 1870s challenge of a group of British Mormon intellectuals to Brigham Young's leadership and authority. William S. Godbe and his associates revolted because they disliked Young's authoritarian community and resented what they perceived as the church's intrusion into matters of personal choice.

Expelled from the church, they established the "New Movement," which eventually faltered. Both a study in intellectual history and an investigation of religious dissent, Wayward Saints explores nineteenth-century American spiritualism as well as the ideas and institutional structure of first- and second-generation Mormonism.