In the days of the building of the railroads and the final settlement of the west the Ingalls family moved from Minnesota, the scene of On the Banks of Plum Creek, to Dakota Territory. This is the story of the life—serene and exciting by turns—that Laura and the others lived while Pa became a railroad man for a time before he found his homestead.

When On the Banks of Plum Creek was published two years ago, May Lamberton Becker said, in the New York Herald Tribune, "There should be some way of conveying to Mrs. Wilder two votes of thanks: one from American children for stories they read to rags, the other from custodians of our past for her enrichment of its records . . . These books are events when they come out an investments for the future." Young readers will take the new book to their hearts as they have the others. They will love it all the more for knowing that it is true—that Mrs. Wilder was the Laura of the story. And when at the very end "the Wilder boys" are mentioned, those who read Mrs. Wilder's Farmer Boy will realize that young Almanzo Wilder of New York State eventually went out to Dakota Territory too, and settled near the Ingalls, and met Laura.

From the dust jacket