Pa's homestead thrives, Laura gets her first job in town, blackbirds eat the corn and oats crops, Mary goes to college, and Laura gets into trouble at school, but becomes a certified school teacher.

At the end of the nineteenth century, nine-year-old Almanzo lives with his family on a big farm in New York State where he raises his own two calves, helps cut ice and shear sheep, and longs for the day he can have his own colt.

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.

A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.

While living on the Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri, thirteen-year-old Rose Wilder celebrates the turn of the twentieth century and begins to wonder about her future.

Follows the experiences over the course of a year of five-year-old Charlotte Tucker, who would grow up to become the grandmother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, living with her family in Roxbury, Massachusetts, during the War of 1812.

After achieving her dream of becoming a teacher in her small farm town of Concord, Wisconsin, in 1857, seventeen-year-old Caroline Quiner, who will become the mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, begins a courtship with Charles Ingalls, a bachelor farmer who aspires to move west.