A tough Minnesota winter brings many changes to Kirsten's frontier life, including the new responsibility of helping her brother Lars set his traps and a move into a new house for her family.
Ten-year-old Kirsten is proud and excited when she finds a bee tree full of honey, one of the natural treasures of her Minnesota frontier world, but she exposes herself to great danger by trying to harvest the honey by herself.
After immigrating from Sweden to join relatives in an American prairie community, Kirsten endures the ordeal of a strange school through a secret friendship with an Indian girl.
When a new girl arrives at school, Kirsten is jealous, completely forgetting how scared and lonely she felt the year before when she was the new girl in school. Gives instructions for making a friendship pillow like those made in the 1850s.
Ten-year-old Kirsten regrets the promise she has made to a ragged boy she discovers alone near a wrecked covered wagon not far from her Minnesota home.