In 1871 Wisconsin, thirteen-year-old Georgia sets out to find her sister Agatha, presumed dead when remains are found wearing the dress she was last seen in, and before the end of the year gains fame as a sharpshooter and foiler of counterfeiters.

After achieving her dream of becoming a teacher in her small farm town of Concord, Wisconsin, in 1857, seventeen-year-old Caroline Quiner, who will become the mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, begins a courtship with Charles Ingalls, a bachelor farmer who aspires to move west.