Draws on oral histories of the Great Plains blizzard of 1888 to depict the experiences of two teachers, a servant, and a reporter who risk everything to protect the children of immigrant homesteaders. The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a long cold spell, warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats. At the hour when most...

"It has required long, difficult years to tame the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory, but in spite of heartache and back-breaking labor, the hardy immigrants recognize that God has been with them every step. What was once merely a dream is now beginning to take shape. And so they face the challenge of proving up their homesteads and building an official town for their growing community. Hjelmer travels west to work on the railroad, but after sending...

The dream of their own farmstead and a good life in America had brought Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund across the Atlantic to pioneer the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. But Roald's tragic disappearance in a winter storm had turned Ingeborg's dreams into a living nightmare. Against nearly impossible circumstance and overwhelming grief, she struggles to keep the farm and her family together. When spring appears, Roald's distant cousin, Haakan arrives...

Prairie Lotus is a powerful, touching, multilayered book about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father's shop, and making at least one friend. Acclaimed, award-winning author Linda Sue Park has placed a young half-Asian girl, Hanna, in a small town in America's heartland, in 1880. Hanna's adjustment to her new surroundings, which primarily means negotiating the townspeople's almost...

It is 1893 and the first generation of immigrants who came to America for the promise of free land and a good life for their children have finally achieved their dreams. They labored hard on the land and now have a bountiful heritage to pass on to the next generation. However, many of the young people aren't interested in becoming farmers--they have aspirations of their own. Thorliff Bjorklund has been writing stories and plays since he was a young...

"A saga of loyalty and survival in the vast, severe American West. Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O'Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as farm laborers, they reenlist in the army and are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud's coalition of Indian tribes in the heart of Montana's Powder River Valley. Thomas finds love amidst the daily carnage--which leads to a moment of violence...

"When Susannah goes to Dakota territory as a mail-order bride she finds something she never dreamed she would-true love. With no prospects for marriage and her parents recently deceased, Susannah Freemont agrees to go west to the Dakota territory to marry her minister's homesteading brother, Jesse. But Susannah is painfully shy, doesn't see herself as worthy of love from either a husband or from God, and lives in constant fear that Jesse is going...

"Martha Jane Cannary ran through names like whiskey, but one moniker stuck--Calamity Jane. Stranded in a Virginia City mining camp, this orphan blasted through the 1860s West, determined to be noticed and tell her own story. The Not So Quiet Life of Calamity Jane shatters the veneer of legends to reveal her tenacious heart. Rowdy and seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction, this devoted friend, jilted lover, sometime wife, and heartbroken mother...