Kiowa County Public Library District

"Laura and her family find a new home in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where the nearby creek and swimming hole lure Laura with dangerous, yet thrilling adventures. Too soon, their life is threatened when prairie fires and other strange events jeopardize their crops."

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 1856, Kirsten and her cousins look after the farm while the adults go to town for supplies, and everything is fine--until a blizzard surprises them.

Ten-year-old Kirsten is proud and excited when she finds a bee tree full of honey, one of the natural treasures of her Minnesota frontier world, but she exposes herself to great danger by trying to harvest the honey by herself.

In the winter of 1898, a seventh-grade boy drops out of school to work with his father, the cook at Blackwater Logging Camp in Minnesota.

Kirsten, a young girl living on the Minnesota frontier, tries to learn the truth about what really happened to her friend and neighbor Erik Sandahl, who has disappeared and is widely believed to have run out on his promises and responsibilities.

Taking place in 1854, Kirsten's stories follow the young Swedish immigrant and her family as they attempt to start a new life on a farm in frontier Minnesota.