Carl Erik, a recent immigrant from Sweden, becomes the man of the house when his father and uncle go to work in a logging camp, and he learns many things about life in Minnesota while attending school, doing his chores, and trying to put meat on the table.

"Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance. This is the story of one such child. As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast...

After grasshoppers ruin the crops, eight-year-old Laura Ingalls and her family leave Plum Creek and move to Burr Oak, Iowa, where they experience life in a small town and help manage a hotel.

Fourteen-year-old Polly Rodgers keeps a diary of her 1873 journey from England to Minnesota as part of a colony of eighty people seeking religious freedom, and of their first year struggling to make a life there, led by her father, a Baptist minister.

In 1862, two best friends, one white and one half Dakota Indian, find themselves involved in a bloody war when when the Dakotas, fed up with being mistreated by the federal government and local citizens, erupt with violence.

After grasshoppers ruin the crops, eight-year-old Laura Ingalls and her family leave Plum Creek and move to Burr Oak, Iowa, where they experience life in a small town and help manage a hotel.

In 1854, ten-year-old Kirsten, living with her family in Minnesota, meets a raiding party of Ojibway Indians and finds unexpected help when her dog is in danger.