Quick Take
- Narration: Bruce Lindsay delivers a composed, respectful reading well-suited to the reverent tone of an authorized LDS biography.
- Themes: Faith and vocation, service over career ambition, LDS institutional leadership
- Mood: Warm and reverential, grounded in specific life detail
- Verdict: A thorough and affectionate biography of Dallin H. Oaks that will resonate deeply with Latter-day Saint listeners and offer genuine insight to anyone curious about how religious conviction shapes a professional life.
There is a particular challenge in reviewing a biography written explicitly within a faith tradition for readers who belong to that tradition. In the Hands of the Lord, Richard E. Turley Jr.’s account of Dallin H. Oaks, arrives with the double weight of authorized biography and institutional significance: Oaks has since ascended to the Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One reviewer reached for this title specifically because of that ascent, wanting to know the man before knowing the office. The biography rewards that impulse.
Bruce Lindsay narrates, and his tone is consistently measured and respectful without tipping into the kind of reverence that makes a subject feel untouchable. At twelve hours and fifteen minutes, the audiobook gives adequate space to the phases of Oaks’s life that might otherwise be compressed in shorter treatments: his childhood after losing his father at age seven, his early marriage at nineteen, his military service, and the academic and legal career that preceded his call to the apostleship in 1984.
A Life Shaped by Early Loss
The biography opens with what is, in retrospect, the defining biographical fact: Oaks was seven years old when his mother became a widow. Turley traces how that early experience of disruption and the particular demands it placed on his mother shaped the man Oaks would become. The portrait of a boy who grew up with unusual responsibilities in a household held together by faith and practical necessity gives texture to the later career choices that might otherwise seem inexplicably selfless. Giving up prestigious legal and academic positions in favor of ecclesiastical service reads differently when you understand the formation that preceded it.
The Scholar and the Servant
Oaks’s trajectory from Brigham Young University president to Utah Supreme Court justice to apostle is the structural spine of the biography. Turley handles the legal and academic chapters with genuine engagement, not simply as prelude to the ecclesiastical material. Reviewer descriptions of Oaks as scholar, teacher, mentor, and litigator who chose service over lucrative opportunity are borne out in the text. Turley documents the specific moments when Oaks passed over options that would have been professionally prestigious and financially secure, and he does so without making those moments feel formulaic.
The Call to the Apostleship
The scene Turley constructs around President Gordon B. Hinckley’s 1984 call to the apostleship is the emotional pivot of the biography. Oaks’s reply, that his life is in the hands of the Lord and his career in the hands of His servants, is the sentence that gives the book its title, and Turley earns that choice. It is not presented as a scripted moment of religious nobility but as the logical conclusion of a lifetime of accumulated decisions. Whether or not the listener shares Oaks’s theological commitments, the coherence of the life Turley describes, in which a man’s stated beliefs and his actual choices align, carries its own kind of force.
Who Should Listen, Who Should Skip
Latter-day Saint listeners who want to understand their current Church president as a person before he held that office will find this exactly the biography they need. The detail is generous, the tone is honest about the challenges Oaks faced including the loneliness of his early childhood and the sacrifices his family made, and Turley is a skilled enough historian to give the secular portions of the biography genuine weight. Non-LDS readers who are simply curious about how institutional religious leadership develops will also find value here, though the biography does not step outside the faith tradition to contextualize LDS practice for outside observers. If that kind of contextualizing is what you need, you will want a supplementary source. If you want to know who Dallin Oaks is and how he became who he is, In the Hands of the Lord is a thorough and genuinely moving account.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be LDS to find this biography meaningful?
The biography is written from within the LDS tradition and does not pause to explain institutional practices for outside observers. Non-LDS listeners with an interest in how religious conviction shapes professional life will find much of value, but readers looking for a critical or outside-perspective account of LDS leadership will need to look elsewhere.
How does the biography handle potentially controversial aspects of Oaks’s public positions?
As an authorized biography, In the Hands of the Lord reflects an institutional perspective. Turley focuses on Oaks’s character, faith development, and service rather than on policy debates. Listeners looking for a critical examination of his public statements on social issues will not find that here.
Is this audiobook primarily about Oaks’s religious life, or does it give substantive attention to his legal and academic career?
The legal and academic career receives serious attention. Turley gives genuine weight to Oaks’s work as a constitutional law scholar and as president of Brigham Young University before pivoting to the ecclesiastical material.
How does narrator Bruce Lindsay handle the devotional passages and scriptural references?
Lindsay maintains a consistent, measured tone throughout, giving devotional content the same steady delivery as biographical narrative. He does not adopt a more theatrical register for spiritual moments, which keeps the pacing even across the book’s twelve hours.
