Orem Library

In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves. Includes author's note.

Thorliff Bjorklund dreams of leaving his father's farm to go to college and pursue his lifelong ambition of becoming a journalist.

The dream of their own farmstead and a good life in America had brought Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund across the Atlantic to pioneer the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. But Roald's tragic disappearance in a winter storm had turned Ingeborg's dreams into a living nightmare. Against nearly impossible circumstances and overwhelming grief, she struggles to keep the farm and her family together.

Her first mistake was emigrating alone. Was this one even worse? Augusta Bjorklund, after discovering her intended bridegroom married someone else, decided to leave her broken heart in Norway and start a new life in America. But knowing no English, Augusta misunderstands a ticket agent's directions in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the harried confusion, she boards the wrong train. Her Bjorklund relatives eagerly await Augusta's arrival in North Dakota....

After getting married and settling at Wild Plum Creek, Charles' and Caroline's lives are turned upside down when disaster strikes and Charles goes east to find work. Caroline and their baby survive the winter in a sod house on their homestead.

Falcon MacCallister's father was a legend in the West, while Falcon's quest for justice has driven him onto the wild side of the law. Famed as a gunslinger, feared for his lethal speed and accuracy, Falcon decides to make it a fair fight when he comes upon a man being attacked by a bandit gang in the Dakota Territory. The man is Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider, himself. Roosevelt knows a brave man when he sees one. And he calls on Falcon when a judge's...

The classic, Spur Award-winning novel by Frank Roderus is now available again. POTTER'S FIELDS is the story of Joe Potter, a man haunted by the past who deals with the harsh realities of the frontier by becoming harsh and violent himself. A former lawman no longer able to find work carrying a badge because of his corruption and brutality, Potter becomes a cowboy and spends the winter in an isolated line shack, where the arrival of a stranger forces...

Sam Morrison, reports for the "Saint Louis Herald," is in Dakota country looking for stories. He decides to join a group of passengers on a steamboat going up the Missouri River for the dedication of a new fort named in honor of one Charles Rawley. On the way he talks to a number of different people about Rawley, including a mysterious stranger who might even be Rawley himself, though Sam has been given at least two eyewitness accounts of Rawley's...