The sole survivors of an Indian massacre, Hardy, a seven-year-old boy, and three-year-old Betty Sue, face hunger, marauding Indians, outlaws, and wild animals as they attempt to cross the prairie to safety.

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men--men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess. Yet bandits were only part of McKaskel's worries. For a mysterious stranger, Con Vallian, had appeared...

Drawing on fresh archeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party--ninety pioneers who became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846-47-- and their unimaginable ordeal

"The story of a Civil War soldier finding his humanity in the face of horrible savagery. Emerging from the Civil War a shamed and broken man, Stephen Latch turns to a life of thievery and murder. Still hoping to uphold the values of the Confederacy, Latch sets his sights on the wealth of resources pouring westward from the northern United States, putting together a band of ruthless misfits to help him stake his claim of the riches of the caravans....

Sixteen-year-old Jenny faces many challenges on an overland journey to California in 1853 with the acting company that she inherited from her father.

Based on an incident on the Oregon Trail recorded by pioneer Ezra Meeker: "the meeting of eleven wagons returning and not a man left in the entire train; all had died, and been buried on the way, and the women returning alone." The novel explores the possible fate of these women, bonded by loss, growing in faith and fighting for survival.

Based on true events, this compelling survival story by award-winning novelist Jane Kirkpatrick is full of grit and endurance. 1844. The Stevens-Murphy company left Missouri to be the first wagons into California through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mostly Irish Catholics, the party sought religious freedom and education in the mission-dominated land. When a heavy snowstorm hits in October, the party separates in three directions. Now young Mary Sullivan,...

While traveling west with her family in 1850, a young girl makes a patchwork quilt chronicling the experiences of the journey and reserves a special patch for her pet hen Josefina.

In 1808, when Emma meets and marries Eric Montclair (the famed "most handsome man west of the Appalachians"), this young daughter of prominent St. Louis Citizens believes a fairy tale has just begun. Instead, her husband's angelic looks quickly prove only to mask the monstrous soul all too capable of possessive emotions and physical abuse. Praying for mercy, she is devastated when Eric insists on her joining his yearlong group expedition to the Pacific...

An account of the westward movement of the pioneers which began in 1841, lavishly illustrated with contemporary paintings and photographs.