Fire and Steel Books in Order

The Fire and Steel series is a long historical saga that follows two ordinary families, one in southern Germany and one in rural Utah, through the upheavals that lead from the late 1800s into the Second World War.

On the German side, readers meet the Eckhardts, a Latter-day Saint family trying to raise children, run businesses and stay faithful as their country hurtles into war, defeat and political chaos. Their hopes are often simple, but the forces pressing on them are not.

Hans Eckhardt's talents and ambition carry him far from his small Bavarian village, just as the First World War explodes across Europe. Later volumes trace the family's struggle with hunger, inflation, wounded pride and the slow, dangerous rise of extremist politics that promise order at a terrible price.

Across the ocean, the Westlands work land in the red rock country of southern Utah. Missionaries, letters and eventually personal visits tie these two families together, connecting the San Juan pioneers of The Undaunted and Only the Brave with the German Saints who will one day face Hitler's regime.

The series asks how decent people can be swept along by events they only partly understand, and what it takes to keep faith and conscience when crowds are cheering for the wrong things.

Each volume sits in a specific span of years, so everyday life matters as much as the headlines. Readers see factory floors, cramped apartments and church meetings in Germany, along with ranch work, drought and family councils in Utah. The tension builds not only from looming war, but from choices about loyalty, courage and how to treat neighbors who suddenly become targets.

Taken together, Fire and Steel offers a grounded way to watch the decades that shaped the twentieth century, always through the lens of families learning that discipleship, and discipleship under pressure, are not the same thing.