Lyn Smith Gregory
We Were Smiths

Escaping the Shadow of Joseph Smith's Mormon Legacy

No descendant of Joseph Smith's family has publicly broken ranks to reveal the truth about our famed ancestor and the origins of the Mormon faith until now.

I am a descendant of Mormon royalty. My bloodline connects back through four generations to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. My great-great-grandfather, Samuel Smith, was Joseph Smith's younger brother and was the designated heir to leadership of the church when an angry mob murdered Joseph Smith.

However, Samuel was poisoned by Brigham Young, the eventual next prophet, by his henchmen in a struggle for succession to the church. These and other secrets are revealed in my memoir, We Were Smiths: Escaping the Shadow of Joseph Smith's Mormon Legacy, which will be released this year.

We Were Smiths is not just my memoir. It's a revelation of a family's unraveling, the undoing of generations of devout reverence, triggered by my sister's and my departure from our faith after discovering the truth. My memoir is about our journey through our family's fracturing and scattering, the quest to redefine what "family" means when truth is told, and legacy becomes toxic and a burden.

It's an in-depth look into a family torn apart by secrets, dysfunction, and exile—the cost of a legacy that requires perfection.

"Like memoirs such as Martha Beck's Leaving the Saints and Tara Westover's Educated, We Were Smiths mines the emotional territory of religion, identity, family bonds, and survivorship."