Swedish farmer John Bergson's daughter Alexandra encourages the family members to help keep his dream alive after his death.

Sixteen Civil War widows living in St. Louis respond to a series of meetings conducted by a land speculator who lures them west by promising "prime homesteads" in a "booming community." Unbeknownst to them, the speculator's true motive is to find an excuse to bring women to the fledging community of Plum Grove, Nebraska, in hopes they will accept marriage proposals shortly after their arrival! Sparks fly when these unsuspecting widows meet the men...

Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully written Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his parents, all but rejected by his wife, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It's only when America enters the First World War that Claude finds...

When Linnie Colsworth comes from the East to visit relatives in Omaha, she is plunged into a wider, more hazardous world than she had ever known. In the wake of the Civil War, land seekers are pouring into the West and displacing the Indian tribes. Not interested in spending her days sewing and serving tea, Linnie travels up the Missouri to deliver a "Dear John" message to her cousin's fiancé, a handsome lieutenant - and suddenly becomes the...

After Civil War veteran Seth Kincaid forgets he was ever married, his wife, Callie, comes out West aiming to gun him down, but he still holds out hope for redemption.

Slogum House "lay on the winter flat of Oxbow like the remains of some great, hulking animal that had foraged the region long ago, leaving its old gray carcass to dry and bleach at the foot of the hogback." Ruled by Gulla Slogum, the house was headquarters for a clan that terrorized what it couldn't seduce or steal. Using her daughter as poisoned bait and her sons as predators, Gulla plotted to put a whole county under her control. She had been insulted...

"One name ... divided between two cousins...equals big trouble for three hearts! When Gavin Miller is hired on to set up a gristmill for the prospering town of Buttonwood, Nebraska, he's looking to build more than a business. For the first time, Gavin is in a position to request the hand of the woman he's never forgotten: Miss Marguerite Chandler. When Marge steps down from the stagecoach, Gavin realizes the terrible blunder he's made. While he never...

At the end of the 17th century in Quebec, Cecile Auclair and her father, the town's apothecary, live a life very different than the one they knew in Paris. They spend the winter with no word from home. But Cecile does not feel exiled, for as old ties die, new ones are formed.

Describes the sights and events a frontier family encounters travelling from South Dakota to the Ozarks.