George on His Own

Read­ers will remem­ber George as Addie’s pesky younger broth­er in Addie Across the Prairie, the first of Lau­rie Lawlor’s sto­ries about the Mills fam­i­ly and their Dako­ta home­stead. Now Addie is in Yank­ton for her first year of high school and twelve-year-old George is anx­ious to earn his liv­ing as a trom­bone player—something he’s very good at.

Mr. Mills, who thinks music is a waste of time, expects George to one day take over the fam­i­ly farm. But George hates farm­ing and deter­mines to “fol­low his vision” after meet­ing a trav­el­ing the­ater troupe, com­plete with musi­cians. When the Mills fam­i­ly suf­fers a dev­as­tat­ing loss for which George feels par­tial­ly respon­si­ble, the con­flict between George and his father comes to a head, and George sets off on his own dra­mat­ic adventure.