When Hans Bremer's father returned to Sweden in 1890, he left his son staring sadly after the stern wheeler as it steamed down the Mississippi from Red Wing, Minnesota. Without friends or family, the sturdy Swedish teen-ager faced a boisterous country, just awakening to its vast power and potentialities.

How Hans found his place in the yawning prairie, rich with its crop of wheat, is a warm, human tale that brims with the drama and excitement of new experiences, problems, and friendships. His encounters with crafty promoters, his work of grading the great wheat harvest, and his fight to protect new and inexperienced immigrants have a full-blooded vitality that makes this a compelling and fast-paced story. Reading at its rewarding best, CLIMB A LOFTY LADDER is a stirring tribute to pioneering Swedish settlers who found the Northwest a desolate prairie and turned it into the granary of America!

From the dust jacket