While living on the Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri, thirteen-year-old Rose Wilder celebrates the turn of the twentieth century and begins to wonder about her future.

When an angry mob drives Joseph Williams and his family from Jackson County, the twelve-year-old must face conflicts within his family, his own unsteady faith, and his growing desire for adventure as a riverboat pilot on the Missouri River.

A year after moving to their farm in the Ozarks, Laura and Almanzo Wilder and their young daughter, Rose, have settled into their new home with a successful vegetable harvest and the beginnings of an apple orchard.

"The trilogy of the warring Hartman family comes to a dramatic conclusion."--cover.

"Will Hartman's sons and daughters were a fierce and determined American family, with a legacy of honor and a bold dream to build new lives on the Missouri frontier. But long before America declared itself at war over the issue of slavery, Kansas and Missouri were in pitched battle. John Brown's bloody raids into Missouri were answered with retaliatory strikes at the homes of the abolitionists. The Hartman family was caught up in the division on opposite...