Polly and Jessie return home to find the house dark and their mother still and silent in her rocking chair, lost inside her own head. Mama can't seem to get past the loss of her last baby. Papa is away. Who knows when he will return? Eleven-year-old Polly and her younger sister must cope on their own, caring for their mother, running the farm and defending their property from land-hungry neighbors. The blue grass of the prairie stretches wide and empty all around them. Can they make it alone?

Spring, 1815: Remembrance "Mem" Nye and her family are going by covered wagon from their Connecticut farm to a new home in the wilds of Western New York State. It is a journey to nowhere: no neighbours, no town, no houses, just endless trees. The journey is perilous for all, but when Mem is left behind, she must face the dangers of the wilderness alone. Mem's courageous story continues in Frozen Summer and The Road to Home.

When Maryanne Caswell left "civilized" Ontario for a new life on the Prairies in 1887, she promised to write to her grandmother and share all her adventures. Her grandmother kept the letters and nearly seventy years later, they were published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper. Maryanne's tales of her first year in what would later become the province of Saskatchewan make for great reading. Don't miss this real-life story of a true pioneer!

Julia is remembering - remembering her life long ago as a Nebraska farm girl, remembering her beloved brother Daniel, and remembering the great dinosaur rush. Paleontologists descended on the countryside warring over the bones of great creatures that could make them famous, and those who owned the land dreamed of finding fossils that could save their struggling farms.

"Mama... that gold you claimed is lying in the fields around here must be hidden by all the lizards, dead leaves, and mule droppings, for I can't see a thing worth picking up and taking home." Lucy Whipple is not happy to be in Lucky Diggins, California. The excitement of the 1849 gold rush has not fired her imagination in the least and she is determined to be miserable until she can get home to Massachusetts. Young curmudgeons will sympathize with this outspoken heroine. By the author of Catherine, Called Birdy, The Midwife's Apprentice, and Mathilda Bone.

"Keep up your courage, Sarah Noble." Sarah keeps hearing her mother's parting words. At eight years old, she is off on the adventure of her life, going with her father to build a house and carve out a home in the Connecticut Wilderness. It is 1707. Sarah will need all of her courage to meet the challenges of this untamed land.

Omikayas is a young girl of the Ojibwa Nation, living on an island in Lake Superior. The year is 1847. Although the shape of her life and culture are different, the joys and sorrows she feels are not so far from those of Laura Ingalls. Omikayas too regards her family with a mixture of love and exasperation. She too is searching for her place in the world. Come and spend a year in the birchbark house.

"Four small walls, sheathed with pine, painted white. A window. A door onto the kitchen, for warmth. Two chairs. A bed, nearly filling up the room, like a bird held in cupped hands... a borning room, set aside for both dying and giving birth..." Here is the tale of an Ohio farm girl's life, seen through the window of the borning room, with all its joys and sorrows.

Meet the Robertsons! Ma, Pa, Granny, and the children - Meg, George, Sarah, Willy, Lizzie and Tommy - are a pioneer family living in the wilds of Eastern Canada in 1840. This is their motto: "Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or go without." Barbara Greenwood combines an exciting story about this family of imaginary pioneers with a wealth of facts about the lives of early settlers, and many fascinating activities readers can do at home. By the author of The Last Safe House, chosen by the Children's Literature Roundtables of Canada as the 1999 Information Book of the Year.

Abbie didn't want to leave their comfortable home in town for the small dark soddy in Nebraska, but her father could find no other way to provide land for his sons. Abbie tries hard not to be selfish, but she can't help thinking, "What about me?" But when tragedy strikes, all Abbie's dreams seem unimportant. How can she and her family go on?

Maggie and her younger sister Annie are orphans. But they have a future far from the slums of New York City. They are bound for the frontier country of the West. Maggie does her best to fit in with the Russell family and adapt to her new life, but farm chores and unfriendly schoolmates make it very difficult. Maggie can't help worrying: what if she never belongs? What if they send her back? What if she is separated from her sister forever?

May Amelia Jackson is the only girl in a Finnish-American family of seven boys, the only girl ever born on the Nasel River - a Miracle. May Amelia is a tom-boy, running wild with her brothers. Life is good, but Amelia can't help hungering after a real miracle - a sister. Will she always be the only girl? This picture of pioneer life in Washington is painted with great warmth and affection. Readers will laugh and cry with Amelia through her many escapades.

Josie has come to feel at home on the Alberta prairie, and she is overjoyed when new neighbours have a daughter her age - finally, a friend! Together, Margaret and Josie investigate the mystery of the silver house, alone and abandoned in the waves of grass, try to cheer Margaret's desperately homesick mother, and dream of what the future may hold for them as the year of 1918 unfolds. This is the sequel to Ticket to Curlew.

The land is dry and dusty. Neighbours have been burnt out by sudden fires in the screaming heat of the Dakota summer. Rachel and her brother, John Wesley, are sent to stay with their Aunt Aggie. But when they return to the farm, something has changed. Pa is going to remarry. Rachel doesn't want anyone to take her mother's place. How far will she go to keep her family from changing?

Papa needs a wife. Anna and Caleb need a mother. So Papa places an advertisement in the newspapers - and receives an answer. Sarah Wheaton has always lived by the sea in Maine. Can she make a new life on the prairie, or will the sea call her away from the family who need her so desperately? Don't miss the sequel, Skylark.

Nine-year old Laura is a pioneer of another sort: she and her family are aboard a whaling ship, travelling treacherous and icy seas from Japan to the Arctic. Based on the diaries and experiences of many such whaling families, Laura's story is a window on a lost way of life.

A pioneer story? In 1923? This is Appalachia, a remote mountainous area in Kentucky where there are no phones, no cars - and no hospitals. The twentieth century has not arrived. Mary Breckenridge and her Frontier Nursing Service are about to ride in and change everything. Here are three stories of the lives touched by this real-life heroine.