While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing--his very own horse--but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather.

During their first four years of marriage, Laura and Almanzo Wilder have a child and fight a losing battle in their attempts to succeed at farming on the South Dakota prairie.

Laura and her family are moving west again, this time to Dakota Territory. Laura really likes their frontier home until the night she and Carrie take a walk and come face to face with a huge prairie wolf!

Fifteen-year-old Laura learns that living away from home and teaching school can be a bit frightening when most of the students are taller than she is, but every week Almanzo Wilder arrives to take her to her family for the weekend.

A family travels to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house and meet a friendly neighbor.