Central Kansas Library System

California's gold country, 1850. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she survives by keeping her hatred alive. Then she meets Michael Hosea, a man who seeks his Father's heart in everything. He obeys God;s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Defying Angel's every bitter expectations, despite her resistance her frozen heart begins to thaw. But overcome by feelings of unworthiness and fear,...

When Diane Chadwick urdges her family to move west to her uncle's ranch in Montana Territory, she imagines an idyllic adventure. Inexperienced but determined. Diane must face the reality of an arduous wagon journey and an unforgettable land. But when tragedy rends the very fabric of her family, she fears for her future in the wild country where love and loss seem to walk the mountain paths hand in hand.

Deborah escapes the Civil War to Texas only to find herself running again to the Kansas territory.

My Antonia is a straightforward narrative, written in a limpid prose of uncanny descriptive accuracy, about the struggles endured by a family of immigrant pioneers and the small community that surrounds them on the unsettled Nebraska plains.

"Young Emma Wagner chafes at the constraints of Bethel colony, an 1850s religious community in Missouri that is determined to remain untainted by the concerns of the world. A passionate and independent thinker, she resents the limitations placed on women, who are expected to serve in quiet submission. In a community where dissent of any form is discouraged, Emma finds it difficult to rein in her tongue and often doesn't even try to do so, fueling...

Emma and her husband leave a close-knit religious community to work in Washington Territory, but when Emma finds herself alone and pregnant with her third child, she is left wondering if an angry God has abandoned her to the consequences of her willfulness.

Tells what life was like on the frontier trail through a series of imagined letters written by Deborah Pieratt, a woman who traveled from Kentucky to Kansas in 1854, taking care of her family of six young children and protecting them from the perils of the road.