After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather.

In 1880s Dakota Territory, teenager Laura Ingalls struggles to earn her teaching certificate, says good-bye to her sister Mary when she leaves home to attend a school for the blind, and shyly begins a romance with Almanzo Wilder.

Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.

When John Hale's parents moved from Chicago to a farm in the Dakota Territory in the late 1880s, he was not happy (too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and that is just the beginning); but after a year, and now eleven, he has settled in and made some friends at school--but when a sunny day in January 1888 turns abruptly into a deadly blizzard he will need all his strength and courage to survive what became known to history as The Children's Blizzard....

In 1875, Kathryn Walsh arrives in a mining town nestled in the Sierra Nevadas where she relaunches her uncle's newspaper, pitting herself against the town's most powerful men until she finds an ally in the local saloon owner, who believes in what she stands for.

"A young Swedish boy finds himself in penniless and alone in California. He travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the West. Driven back over and over again on his journey through vast expanses, Hakan meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre (travel narratives, the bildungsroman,...

A large print version of the award winning story of Anna, her brother Caleb, and Papa's new potential wife, Sarah from Maine.

"Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It's locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear... The year is 1914, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, California, in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of...

One of America’s greatest women writers, Willa Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel—the first of her books set on the Nebraska frontier. A tale of the prairie land encountered by America’s Swedish, Czech, Bohemian, and French immigrants, as well as a story of how the land challenged them, changed them, and, in some cases, defeated them, Cather’s novel is a uniquely American epic.
Alexandra...

Describes the nineteenth century American gold rush, and includes information on gold rush "boomtowns," relations between Native Americans and gold rush pioneers, and the importance of the gold rush on American history.