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.
In 1894 Laura Ingalls Wilder, her husband, and her seven-year-old daughter Rose leave the Ingalls family in Dakota and make the long and difficult journey to Missouri to start a new life.
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.
After moving from South Dakota, Rose Wilder eventually makes friends, proves herself to be the best speller in her class, and copes with a difficult teacher at her new Missouri school.