From Connecticut, where Wilford Woodruff was born in 1807, to San Francisco where he was befriended by the cosmopolitan Bohemian Club before dying in 1898, Woodruff's life was an unpredictable odyssey. The same man who scientifically cultivated fruit trees in Utah was equally known for his vision on a Navajo mesa in Arizona in 1880. The man who balanced his ledger with penny-accuracy was the same individual who modeled buckskin temple robes to friends on his birthday and accepted from Brigham Young as a birthday gift one of Young's daughters as a wife.Woodruff became president of the LDS church while hiding from federal marshal's. Convinced that non-Mormons, gentiles, would soon be smitten by the calamities promised in the Bible, he bided his time. However, as the parousia was delayed, he eventually negotiated with the United States.To complement the exhaustive ten-volume Wilford Woodruff diary series and index published by Signature Books as a limited edition more than a decade ago, Susan Staker has condensed the highlights of Woodruff's revealing personal narrative into one readable volume, along with prefatory information and appendices.