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.
While living on the Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri, thirteen-year-old Rose Wilder celebrates the turn of the twentieth century and begins to wonder about her future.
When drought and fire afflict Rocky Ridge Farm, eleven-year-old Rose Wilder and her parents temporarily move to Mansfield and try to adjust to a new life in town.
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.