Fairbanks is renowned for his monumental The Tragedy of Winter Quarters in Nebraska, four monuments on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the Angel Moroni on four temples, and the friezes on the Hawaiian temple and its baptismal font.

Young Avard was doing commissioned work in 1915 at age eighteen. During more than a fifty-year career he placed four monumental-scale statues at the nation's capitol; another in Sparta, Greece; two in U.S. cathedrals; and one each in downtown Chicago, Gettysberg, and Lake Tahoe. His work ranged from "The Awakening of Aphrodite" in Oregon to "Padres Dominguez and Escalante" in Utah. He produced portraits of a Canadian prime minister and a Chrysler board chairman, and designed the winged mermaid hood ornament for the 1930 Plymouth. His firm belief in Mormonism is the theme of this book, with a hint of his secular accomplishments but emphasis on the sacred. The artist died in 1987.

Eugene F. Fairbanks, author of A Sculptor's Testimony in Bronze and Stone: Sacred Sculpture of Avard T. Fairbanks, is the son of Avard T. Fairbanks and an anesthesiologist in Bellingham, Washington, where he also sculpts—including one publicly-funded, monumental-scale statue overlooking the local harbor.