Nine-year-old Almanzo lives with his family on a big farm in New York State at the end of the nineteenth century. He raises his own two calves, helps cut ice and shear sheep, and longs for the day he can have his own colt.

A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.

When Albert discovers that he has a terminal illness, he decides to spend the rest of his life in Walnut Grove; baby Rose Wilder is kidnapped by a woman who recently lost her own child; the residents of Walnut Grove deal with the devastating news that their town will be destroyed.

The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas.

Laura and her beloved bulldog, Jack, share some wild adventures as the Wilder family moves from Wisconsin to Kansas and later to Minnesota.

In this funny and thoughtful guide to a romanticized version of the American expansion west, children's book editor and memoirist McClure (I'm Not the New Me) attempts to recapture her childhood vision of "Laura World" (i.e., the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books about an 1880s pioneer family)

After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather.

Laura Ingalls and her pioneer family encounter a variety of animals traveling through and living on the American frontier at the turn of the century.