Christianity’s first mythical utopia, Eden, failed almost immediately. The clear lesson is that human nature makes utopian societies impossible. Yet time and again, faithful dreamers have tried to forge perfection out of impure souls. Those whose existence challenges the ideal are either pounded into conformity or discarded.

For more than 70 years, the LDS church has misapplied both faith and science to tear out and rewrite the human operating systems of tens of thousands of innocent souls who found themselves on the wrong side of God’s ledger. No Place is a broad, yet deeply personal history of one utopia’s assault on itself.