It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands and the summer has been hard. Rachel and Isaac DuPree had left Chicago fourteen years ago to stake their claim. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle are bellowing with thirst, and supplies have dwindled. Struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She...

In the early 1900s, four orphaned siblings, the eldest being seventeen, set out to fulfill their uncle's dream of homesteading in Tripp County, South Dakota, and although they face drought, discomfort, and sabotaging squatters, new friends and inner strength help them carry on.

When Europeans arrived in North America, they encountered the Native people. Contrary to stereotype, American Indians were not simply ferocious warriors or peaceable lovers of the land. They were, like all people, an amalgam: charismatic and forward thinking, imaginative and courageous, compassionate and resolute, and, at times, arrogant, vengeful, and reckless. Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction...