The Bears of Blue River describes the adventures of a young boy growing up in early nineteenth-century rural Indiana. Little Balser lives with his parents, a younger brother, and a baby sister in a cozy log cabin on the bank of the Big Blue River. Although only thirteen or fourteen years old, he is quite familiar with the dangers and rigors of frontier life. As the story unfolds, the boy becomes lost in the forest, encounters the fierce one-eared...

Forced off their land in Kentucky in 1816, nine-year-old Sarah Lincoln, known as Sally, and her family, including younger brother Abe, move to the Indiana frontier.

When grandfather went hunting, he had only one load for his gun, an ax and a bird net, but he returned with a bear, a deer, a fish, seven turkeys, two dozen geese and a barrel of honey.