After
leaving "Indian Territory," the Ingalls family arrives in Minnesota and
trades their waggon and team for the dugout home and ox team of a man
wanting to head West. Pa has big dreams of the wheat crop they are sure
to garner and how wealthy they will be as a result. It is a beautiful
beginning for the family as the girls enjoy playing in nearby Plum Creek
while Pa begins creating a field for planting wheat and then builds a
beautiful home for the family on credit -- which he plans to pay back
once he harvests his wheat. The girls even start to school for the first
time in their lives.
But soon the family learns what the locals
meant when they said the mild Winter was grasshopper weather. Because
the week before the wheat is ready to harvest, a plague of grasshoppers
fall from the sky and eat every living plant in sight -- including Pa's
beautiful wheat. Forced to find work to pay his debts, Pa leaves the
family and walks East. Ma and the girls hold down the home-front while
Pa is away -- not once, but twice -- and learn how harsh a Minnesota
blizzard can be. And they all learn the most important lesson of all:
what matters most is family.
***Another great book in the Little House on the Prairie series. I love reading about life from Laura's viewpoint in the 1800s.
