A young African-American boy describes the wilderness adventures of his pioneering family in Kansas in the 1870s. ‘It is remarkable that a writer can convey an accurate sense of historical time and place while telling a warm, realistic (and factual) story to primary graders. Recommended for middle graders with reading difficulties as well as for younger children.’ —BL. Notable Children's Books of 1978 (ALA) A Reading Rainbow Selection Notable 1978 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)

When Horse-Drawn wagons retraced the Oregon Trail to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Great Migration, Candy Moulton, as a correspondent for the Casper Star-Tribune, climbed into the lead wagon driven by Ben Kern. Moulton and Kern's Wagon Wheels is a unique book comparing the trail and the trip -- then and now. Read about the journey, the friendships, the landscape, the weather, the animals, and the politics of an overland crossing by wagon. Draw conclusions about which things have changed in 150 years and which seem to remain the same.

Popular novelist Gilbert Morris finds fresh romantic, history-based inspiration in Joelle’s Secret. This mid-1800s tale begins with seventeen-year-old Joelle Jones fending off unwelcome advances from her predatory stepfather just after her mother has died. When the man is declared Joelle’s legal guardian, she knows he will have his way with her, so in desperation runs away. Pursued by the stepfather who offers a reward for her return, Joelle cuts her long beautiful hair, poses as a young man, and finds work as a stablehand. She meets a spiritually frustrated treasure hunter who—believing Joelle to be a male—invites her to join a wagon train to gold-rich California. But hard living on the trail makes it harder for Joelle to conceal her identity. When her traveling companion learns the truth, matters of faith and friendship become tense until Joelle helps him realize that God can indeed do all things, and that some things—like true love—are worth even more than gold.

Re-creates the highs and lows of cooking and eating on the Oregon Trail.

Daisy Bell Catherine Brown was only eight years old in 1880, when her physician father, her mother, grandmother, siblings and other relatives decided to join the wagon train in May Day, Kansas, and head for Oregon on the Old Oregon Trail. This is her story, which she began writing seventy-two years later when she was eighty years old. In the meantime, she married three times: First to David Pier, at the age of sixteen, to whom she bore eight children. When he died, she married Al Goldsby, and after his death, Charles Ackley, whom she also outlived. She died at the age of ninety-three. Daisy saw it all, from a wagon train crossing the plains to astronauts in space. She tells how it was on the American frontier, when men were men and women were glad of it. "A remarkable story by a remarkable lady, who is much revered by her hundreds of descendants." --Her grandson, Joseph Pierre who edited and illustrated the book

When the severe economic depression of the 1800s destroys the Haydens' fortune, 22-year-old Jori Hayden and her family venture west along the Santa Fe Trail in search of a new livelihood, but despite the dangers they encounter at every turn, romance, faith, and family prove to be their biggest fortunes.

In 1850, Temperance Peabody, age 32, is a plain yet beautiful woman who has yet to know the thrill of romantic love. Raised in the Oregon territory where her parents established a strict religious colony, she was never allowed to have a suitor but now longs to have a family of her own. After her parents die and a cholera epidemic wracks the colony, Temperance feels called by God to take the surviving orphaned children back East to their extended families. But the only man available to accompany her on the dangerous journey is Thaddeus Brennan, a hard-edged drifter with good reasons of his own to get out of town. Despite the mismatch of Temperance’s purity with Thad’s hot temper, heavy drinking, and distaste for kids, the intensities of their trek help the two find common ground, perhaps enough on which to build a lasting relationship. But life and love are unpredictable. And when another man and woman join the journey, and a shock awaits two of the orphans, this hearty story of faith and new desires duly follows.