The Ingalls family packs up their covered wagon and travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home in Kansas Territory, where wide open land stretches as far as the eye can see. On the prairie, they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.

When John Hale's parents moved from Chicago to a farm in the Dakota Territory in the late 1880s, he was not happy (too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and that is just the beginning); but after a year, and now eleven, he has settled in and made some friends at school--but when a sunny day in January 1888 turns abruptly into a deadly blizzard he will need all his strength and courage to survive what became known to history as The Children's Blizzard....

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.

Ma and the girls follow Pa west by train where they make their home at a rough railroad camp and plan for their own homestead.

During their first four years of marriage, Laura and Almanzo Wilder have a child and fight a losing battle in their attempts to succeed at farming on the South Dakota prairie.

Laura is growing up and in addition to working hard to earn money to help send Mary to a school for the blind, her social life is becoming more interesting and includes a blossoming friendship with Almanzo Wilder.

In the late 1860s in the Texas hill country, a big yellow dog and a fourteen-year-old boy form a close, loving relationship.

Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

Fifteen-year-old Laura becomes a school teacher and gets engaged, and starts a new life as the wife of Almanzo Wilder.