In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves. Includes author's note.

Hjelmer travels west to work on the railroad, but after sending only one letter to Penny, who has agreed to wait for him.

The dream of their own farmstead and a good life in America had brought Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund across the Atlantic to pioneer the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. But Roald's tragic disappearance in a winter storm had turned Ingeborg's dreams into a living nightmare. Against nearly impossible circumstances and overwhelming grief, she struggles to keep the farm and her family together.

Six years ago, a shocking secret sent Agnes Pratt running in search of a new start. She found it in Penance, a rugged town of miners and lumberjacks in the Dakota Territory, where she became Miss Aggie, respected schoolteacher and confirmed old maid. But the past has a way of catching up with people. When childhood friend and former sweetheart James Harris accepts a position as the town doctor, Aggie's pleasantly predictable days suddenly become anything...

"March, 1875. Although he has never had much time for George Custer, hero of the American Civil War and Commander of the 7th Cavalry, Matthew Grand feels duty bound to respond to a call for help from his West Point contemporary. Arriving at Fort Abraham Lincoln, deep in Dakota territory, private enquiry agents Grand and Batchelor discover the fort to be a powder keg of rumour and suspicion, petty rivalries, resentments - and closely-guarded secrets....

Susannah, left alone and without any means of support when her parents die, agrees to marry her pastor's brother, Jesse, and move to the untamed frontier of the Dakota Territory where her new husband's confidence in her and unwavering faith in Godsustains her until she can finally begin to see all the good things God has planned for her.

"Dakota Territory, 1867. The ODriscoll brothers have survived a Sioux massacre, but Michael is gravely wounded. The deserters are fleeing north with Toms lover, Sara, when they come upon a sheltering rock by a river down off the Bozeman trail. If there is game here, they may survive the winter. But their attempts to find food and endure the savage winter are threatened by the arrival in their camp of two trappers, whose presence sets in motion a series...

"Martha Jane Cannary ran through names like whiskey, but one moniker stuck-Calamity Jane. Stranded in a Virginia City mining camp, this orphan blasted through the 1860s West, determined to be noticed and tell her own story. The Not So Quiet Life of Calamity Jane shatters the veneer of legends to reveal her tenacious heart. Rowdy and seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction, this devoted friend, jilted lover, sometime wife, and heartbroken mother...