During the War of 1812, Caroline finds evidence that someone is smuggling precious supplies to the British and fears that the traitor may be her own uncle. Includes an "Inside Caroline's World" essay about smuggling during the War of 1812.

As he grows up on his family's farm in New York, Almanzo Wilder dreams of having a colt of his own.

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing-his very own horse-but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

While trying to earn money for a motor bike, fourteen-year-old Joe Pederson becomes involved with the Mexicans who work on his family's farm and develops a better relationship with his father.

"The Hudson River Valley, 1769. A man mysteriously disappears without a trace, abandoning his wife and children on their farm at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. At first many believe that his wife, who has the reputation of being a scold, has driven her husband away, but as the strange circumstances of his disappearance circulate, a darker storyunfolds. And as the lines between myth and reality fade in the wilderness, and an American nation struggles...