Wherever Kirsten goes in her hometown of Ryd, Sweden, there is one word on everyone's lips: America. All around her, crops are failing and families are one bad harvest away from starving. When Kirsten's Uncle Olav writes from America to tell about the rich farmland there, the Larsons make the decision to join him in America. Kirsten braves terrible storms and deadly disease on her journey across the ocean. After six long weeks at sea, she finally hears the welcome cry, "Land ho!" On wobbly legs, Kirsten makes her way down the ship's gangplank. What will happen now? she wonders. Will I ever feel at home in this new land? Book jacket.

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.

Kirsten and her family celebrate their first Christmas in their new home on Uncle Olav's farm in mid-19th-century Minnesota

Ten-year-old Kirsten finds a bee tree full of honey.

Kirsten's six-book series is bound in one volume. Kirsten Larson is a Swedish immigrant girl growing up in 1854 Minnesota. "With quiet strength and an open heart, she discovers the true meaning of home -- and that love is the same in any language."--Cover, p.4

We stopped at a roadside diner. People asked if I was his daughter. They ask all the time. Hoping, accusing. We never say yes, and we never say no. We ate our food at a booth in a hungry, self-conscious rush, straight out of the wrappers. They didn't have plates. We left a tip, just change. The waitress scooped it up straight away as we slid out of the booth. She was middle-aged and bulgy, in a proper matronly waitress's dress. She shot us what I suppose was intended to be a look of gratitude. She really only managed a weak glare. I guess that's the countryside for you. People are a little edgy.' Across the heartless expanse of middle America, a teenaged girl is riding shotgun with an older man. She watches him; she sees her fascination tallied in the black looks of waitresses, the knowing smiles of motel clerks. The man can see no proper way of conducting this relationship but is bound to her by concern and tenderness; perhaps desire. The girl craves only closeness. She knows the Ice Age is coming, and we will need to huddle together for warmth. Kirsten Reed's debut novel, with its echoes of Nabokov, Kerouac and Bret Easton Ellis, captures the translucent moment at the end of childhood in all its awkwardness, sincerity and heedless vulnerability. In prose both lyrical and earthy, comic and darkly harrowing, this extraordinary young writer creates a journey of irresistible momentum and tragic possibility. It will leave you with the sense that you have met someone significant; and you will not soon forget her.

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.