Remembering her mother's words, an eight-year-old girl finds courage to go alone with her father to build a new home in the Connecticut wilderness and to stay with the Indians when her father goes back to bring the rest of the family.
While making house calls with her frontier-doctor father, Cora Frear finds herself in a dangerous situation as she and her father are surrounded by a prairie fire raging out of control.
"Congress has ruled that settlers in Kansas Territory will decide whether Kansas will enter the Union as free or a slave state. Charles Keller's papa is an abolitionist, and he's moving the family to Kansas so he can cast his vote for freedom ..."
While Papa is off fighting on the Missouri border, Charlie is left in charge of the family in their remote cabin in Bleeding Kansas and so must keep everyone safe when a fierce prairie blizzard growls and rages outside their door.