Jim Hawkins is on his way, coming to rescue his daughter with a team of Nephite specialists. However, he soon discovers his son Harry has tagged along, and that it’s likely too late to return him since the Christian settlement has left Zarahemla and is traveling in the exact opposite direction of where Jim’s team is going. Complicating matters, their former-Gadianton guide is pretty unstable, and on Melody’s end of things, Jacob Moon is tempting her, her journey is physically dangerous, and she’s starting to have stomach convulsions. Also, the death of the Savior is likely weeks away (precipitating massive destruction on the American hemisphere) and they’ll have to infiltrate a CITY to retrieve Melody and Garth.
Jim and his team soldier on, but their guide Lamachi is worried about Gadianton spies killing him. This turns out to be true, as one of their own teammates is revealed as an assassin, which Lamachi barely summons the guts to kill. But it matters little; soon after Lamachi is wounded in a brief engagement, refuses to have it seen to, and dies of infection and blood loss. Saddened, the company continues on (giving their best guess as to the route to travel) and encounter none other than Jonas, a son of the prophet Nephi he asked them to look out for, and the man who freed Jim in the previous book. He also has a curelom creature to ride, which turns out to be a sub-species of MAMMOTH that somehow survived to this era! The group continue on to Jacobugath, and discover it, but find that Melody and Garth are being held in an island prison outside the city limits.
Meanwhile, on Melody’s end of things things are going ... okay. Her stomach convulsions have stopped, but she nearly drowned in a river (Marcos saved her) and Jacob Moon is planning to torture her, likely to make her uncle Garth reveal the location of a treasure. On top of that, Marcos - her assigned handler and the son of Jacob - seems to be in love with her, which would be nice except that he helped frame her dad for murder and is fine helping HIS dad tyrannize. Reunited with her uncle in the island prison, Melody learns several important things. A) her uncle likely DOESN’T know where the treasure is, B) he HAS had a vision of a “Beast on the Waters” coming to save them, and C) he’s done the math, and the death of the Savior is likely to occur in the next twelve hours.
But they’re not likely to survive that long. Jacob brings them to the battlements and encases Melody’s hands and head in a quickly-solidifying goo, leaving her suffocating and unable to claw free. With her life in the balance, he interrogates Garth, realizes he really doesn’t know, and sends him back to the dungeons while leaving Melody to suffocate. But at that moment, Jim and co (assisted by a displaced mountain tribe) launch their attack, and Melody is saved and rescued.
Team Hawkins sweep around to the dungeon and use the mammoth to bring its walls down (fulfilling the prophecy of the Beast on the Waters), but Jacob and his men try to keep them from escaping. Marcos, who has switched sides by this point, joins in on the heroes’ side, but then the Savior dies and all hell breaks loose. A storm pins the heroes down while an earthquake rages. Melody sees Marcos’s body lying in the storm and asks Jim to get him, but it turns out to be Jacob, who resembles his son. He and Jim struggle, but with Marcos’s arrival, Jacob is successfully pushed down a fissure, killing him. Jim then finds Jonas trapped in another fissure and saves his life, incurring the debt that will free him later. But tragedy strikes when a wall collapses on young Harry, crippling him from the waist down.
While waiting out the disasters, Jim and his company hear the voice of God as in the Book of Mormon, and eventually the clouds lift. The company make their way to the land of Bountiful, where the other Christians are, and help rebuild the town, though Harry is still crippled. Several months later, as in the Book of Mormon, Christ himself descends to visit with the Nephite Christians and blesses them all, even healing Harry’s legs. Confident that their journey is over, Jim, Garth, Jenny and their kids make their way through the caves and return to their own time. Jim turns himself in for the crime he’s still accused of, but it turns out that in his absence, the detectives focused on other evidence and found a strong case for his innocence. He thus settles down with his kids to enjoy domestic bliss, having learned some valuable things and confident no crazy thing will ever happen to him again...
