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.

As he grows up on his family's farm in New York, Almanzo Wilder dreams of having a colt of his own.

After moving from Malone, New York, to Spring Valley, Minnesota, in the 1870s, fourteen-year-old Almanzo Wilder, who would grow up to become the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and his family must decide whether to stay out west or return home to the life they have always known.