West Along the Wagon Road, 1852

Every­one on the wag­on train knew Har­ri­et ‘Duck’ Scott was look­ing for adven­ture, as the Scott fam­i­ly left Illi­nois for the far­away Ore­gon Territory.

Then Moth­er died and Father became like a stranger, lost in a world of his own. It was up to Duck and her five sis­ters, three broth­ers, and nine hired hands to keep their wag­on train togeth­er. But Duck’s life didn’t set­tle down. Her old­er sis­ters, Jen­ny and Fan­ny, were chang­ing in ways she couldn’t under­stand. And poor lit­tle Wilkie was becom­ing more with­drawn every day. At least Mag­gie still paid atten­tion to her; she was still the sis­ter Duck loved the best.

Noth­ing could have pre­pared the Scott fam­i­ly for the dan­gers they were about to meet as they crossed the desert, the plains, and the moun­tains, and felt the heat, the hunger, the thirst that wouldn’t go away. Sud­den­ly Duck and her sis­ters knew their mission—to find water and save their fam­i­ly, no mat­ter what risks they had to take!