Kiowa County Public Library District

"Following the turn of the seasons, eleven-year-old Eldon traces the daily routines of his life on a farm and his relationship with his older brother, Wayne. During the winter, with little work to be done on the farm, Eldon and Wayne spend the quiet hours with their family, listening to their uncle David's stories. But Eldon soon learns that, although he has lived on the same farm, in the same house with his uncle for eleven springs, summers, and...

She never intended to stay. So why is leaving so hard? The fertile prairies of Dakota Territory have finally begun to yield the bountiful harvests the pioneers have dreamed about since leaving their homes in Norway. The tiny community of Blessing is beginning to expand and thrive, its hardy citizens at last enjoying a measure of prosperity. Mary Martha MacCallister comes to Blessing from Missouri to visit her brother. She volunteers to help at the...

Augusta Bjorklund, after discovering her intended bridegoom married someone else, decides to leave her broken heart in Norway and start a new life in America. But knowing no English, Augusta misunderstands a ticket agent's directions in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the harried confusion, she boards the wrong train.

Certain she can't live without Hamre Bjorklund, the impetuous Sophie Knutson rejects her father's request to postpone her marriage until after graduation and convinces Hamre to elope. But far from her family, Sophie finds that life as a fisherman's bride in Ballard, Washington, is not all she had envisioned. Pregnant and lonely Hamre is away at sea, she hires on at a fish cannery, only to be fired after fainting on the job. When tragedy strikes, heartbroken...

"Each member of Erik Sheepflattener's modern-day Viking-heritage family has a motto to live by. Erik is developing a motto he can truly believe in : AVOID STUFF. But when he and his older sister Brunhilde spend the summer with their rough-and-tumble cousins in Minnesota, axe-wielding Bru gets the idea to name and conquer all of Erik's fears."

"After three long years of scrimping and saving to buy tickets for their passage to America, Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund, along with their son, Thorliff, finally arrive at the docks of New York City. It was the promise of free land that fed their dream and lured them from their beloved home high above the fjords of Norway in 1880."-Cover.

Thorliff Bjorklund has been writing since he was a young boy and now longs to attend college to study journalism. But his father has other plans for him and refuses to agree. Thorliff dreads going against his father's wishes and cannot imagine any honorable way to leave home. To make matters worse, the threat of a crop failure may mean there'll be no money for college anyway. Elizabeth Rogers has been raised in a life of privilege, yet she has an...

Ingeborg, her husband Roald, and their son immigrate to America with high hopes in 1880. When New York doesn't measure up to their expectations, they continue westward until reaching the Dakota territory. The family must struggle to achieve their dream.

"An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history-and the men who drove her to it. They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams-their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was...

Defiant Sophie leaves home with her beau, but when tragedy strikes and a heartbroken Sophie wishes to return, she may not be welcome.