Cañon City Public Library

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen...

She never intended to stay. So why is leaving so hard? The fertile prairies of Dakota Territory have finally begun to yield the bountiful harvests the pioneers have dreamed about since leaving their homes in Norway. The tiny community of Blessing is beginning to expand and thrive, its hardy citizens at last enjoying a measure of prosperity. Mary Martha MacCallister comes to Blessing from Missouri to visit her brother. She volunteers to help at the...

"In 1876, Sophia signs up with the Board of Foreign Missions after her life plans fall apart. Dreaming of an exotic posting to China, she is sent to the Ponca Indian Agency in Dakota Territory. Teaching the Ponca children brings a joy she has never known and ignites a passion for the People"--

Augusta Bjorklund, after discovering her intended bridegoom married someone else, decides to leave her broken heart in Norway and start a new life in America. But knowing no English, Augusta misunderstands a ticket agent's directions in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the harried confusion, she boards the wrong train.

Ever so slowly Dakota Territory is being transformed from a vast prairie into rich farmland. With the coming of the railroad, the small town of Blessing begins to prosper, and the Bjorklund family is reaping the promised harvest that had lured them from their beloved home in Norway. But for Ingeborg and Haakan, realizing their dreams will not come without a struggle. After their own fields are harvested, Haakan and the neighboring men take the steam...

"1891--Living separately for three years, fourteen-year-old twins, Katherine and Tommy Arthur, have done their best to make each boarding house feel like home. But unrest grows as they are driven to questionable actions just to survive. Meanwhile their desperate mother is confronted with breaking yet another promise to her children. Then a miracle descends. Hope rises on a cold, rainy night and changes everything. If Jeanie could just get word to...

"A saga of loyalty and survival in the vast, severe American West. Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O'Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as farm laborers, they reenlist in the army and are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud's coalition of Indian tribes in the heart of Montana's Powder River Valley. Thomas finds love amidst the daily carnage--which leads to a moment of violence...

What they find on America's vast plains is not what they expected -- but it's more than they ever dared to dream.

"Martha Jane Cannary ran through names like whiskey, but one moniker stuck-Calamity Jane. Stranded in a Virginia City mining camp, this orphan blasted through the 1860s West, determined to be noticed and tell her own story. The Not So Quiet Life of Calamity Jane shatters the veneer of legends to reveal her tenacious heart. Rowdy and seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction, this devoted friend, jilted lover, sometime wife, and heartbroken mother...

"It has required long, difficult years to tame the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory, but in spite of heartache and back-breaking labor, the hardy immigrants recognize that God has been with them every step. What was merely a dream is now beginning to take shape. And so they face the challenge of proving up their homesteads and building an official town for their growing community. Hjelmer travels west to work on the railroad, but after sending only...