Josefina and her sisters have been struggling ever since Mama died a year ago. When Mama's sister, Tia Dolores, comes to live on their rancho, the girls are overjoyed. At last, they have someone to help and teach them as Mama used to. Tia Dolores has lots of new ideas, too! When Papa's sheep are killed in a flood, Tia Dolores comes up with the idea to start a weaving business. And Tia Dolores wants to teach the girls to read and write, something Mama never learned to do. Josefina worries that all these new ideas will mean there's no room for the old ways. Will Tia Dolores's changes make Josefina forget Mama? Book jacket.

Nine-year-old Josefina, the youngest of four sisters living in New Mexico in 1824, tries to help run the household after her mother dies.

California, here we come!Faith's Pa says there's no room on a wagon train for Josefina, a chicken who's too tough to eat and too old to lay eggs. But Faith loves her pet. Can Josefina show Pa that she still has a few surprises left in her?

Josefina hopes to become a "curandera" or healer like Tâia Magdalena, and she is tested just before her tenth birthday when a friend receives a potentially fatal snakebite.

In the early 1800s, nine-year-old Josefina accompanies her father into the New Mexican mountains to check on the elderly shepherd who works for him, and she proves herself a good traveling companion when her father has an accident.

When Tía Dolores, the beloved aunt who has cared for the Montoya family since the death of their mother, announces that she is planning to leave, Josefina and her sisters try to find a way to change her mind.

In 1825, when Josefina trusts a trader in Santa Fe with an important deal, she makes a surprising discovery about this young American, who leaves town without paying her