Pa's homestead thrives, Laura gets her first job in town, blackbirds eat the corn and oats crops, Mary goes to college, and Laura gets into trouble at school, but becomes a certified school teacher.

Hard-working but soft hearted, Casie Carmichael seems to be a magnet for strays and misfits. When a run-down ranch ends up in her possession, she hopes to sell it off. But before long, she finds a horse that needs rescuing, an exasperating old flame who turns her life upside down, and a trio of kids in dire need of help. Together, they will discover that Hope Springs, South Dakota is a place where the heart goes to heal.

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.

Hoping to escape the attention brought on by the accident that flattened Stanley, the Lambchop family drives to South Dakota, where they become involved in a wild west adventure at Mount Rushmore.

Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.'s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.'s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths...