SALT LAKE CITY—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a new book on Tuesday titled “Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870­–2024” from the Church Historian’s Press. The book covers Latter-day Saint women’s history and follows the growth of Young Women to a worldwide organization. It is the first book-length scholarly history of the Young Women organization ever published.

The cover of "Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024," the first extended scholarly history of the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book is available now from the Church Historian’s Press. ©2025 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.

  “When I first began working on this project, almost exactly six years ago, my knowledge of the history of the Young Women organization was limited almost entirely to my own experience in the program some years ago,” said Amber Taylor, one of the authors. “The fact that an organization has existed for more than 150 years, whose sole purpose is to guide young women into adulthood, to help them develop faith in God and a relationship with Jesus Christ – this is simply remarkable.”

The Young Women organization started with a small group of Brigham Young’s daughters originally called the Young Ladies’ Department of the Ladies’ Cooperative Retrenchment Association to what it is today.

“Carry On” includes the development of programs such as the Bee-Hive Girls, Personal Progress and Young Women camp along with personal stories from young women. 

“Lisa (Olsen Tait) and I were reflecting just this Sunday night at a fireside about how the fish don’t tell you about the water,” said James Goldberg, also one of the authors. “So we had to both study what successive generations of female leaders over the Young Women organization were thinking and what was their water. What cultural currents were they swimming in, drawing on, interacting with.”

Goldberg said then in the book they wanted to do their best to give a sense of the human moments. “Where individual young women and their local leaders figured out what it meant to follow Jesus Christ and become his disciples in a changing world through these shared intergenerational connections.”

This book has been 10 years in the making, said Tait, one of the book’s authors and the department’s managing historian for women’s history. “It was approved as a project in 2016 so it’s taken a long time to bring this book to fruition and in large part that’s because this was an unplowed field. This is the first comprehensive scholarly history of the Young Women organization.”

“The Young Women organization is something that has been really important in my life and had a profound influence on the trajectory of my life,” said Young Women General President, Emily Belle Freeman. “We’re living in a remarkable time right now that is different from anything that I read in this history, which is a time where the youth are asking questions. They’re asking, ‘Why? Why do I want to believe in Jesus Christ? That is why I love serving them at this time because the ‘why’ is so powerful.”

“What surprised me about the book was the fact that it’s so readable,” said Elder Hugo E. Martinez. “Because we hear scholarly work and say OK go here, nowhere else, but it’s a historical narrative of key events that cycle back and forth. And how they were handled throughout mingled with personal stories, which is how the Lord would have us teach history.”

Martinez said he heard somebody say, “that is not going to be on the tabletop or the device of a young woman.” “But I think it would. There are many readers. They want to know and they love history.”

“We wrote the book intentionally to appeal to broad audiences,” said Tait. “So of course, there will be inherently an audience of interest among church members, among women in the church, but we also engage with the broader scholarship and historical work on the history of the Church, as well as the history of youth childhood and women’s organizations and organizations for young people and so forth.”

“I love what Michelle Craig says at the very end of this book,” said Belle Freeman. “It is the very last sentence and for me it sums up the entire purpose for the creation of this entire book. She said ‘the true beauty of our history is the young women.’ And I also believe that that is true.”