In 1894 Laura Ingalls Wilder, her husband, and her seven-year-old daughter Rose leave the Ingalls family in Dakota and make the long and difficult journey to Missouri to start a new life.
A year after moving to their farm in the Ozarks, Laura and Almanzo Wilder and their young daughter Rose have settled into their new home with a successful vegetable harvest and the beginnings of an apple orchard.
When drought and fire afflict Rocky Ridge Farm, eleven-year-old Rose Wilder and her parents temporarily move to Mansfield and try to adjust to a new life in town.
While living on the Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri, thirteen-year-old Rose Wilder celebrates the turn of the twentieth century and begins to wonder about her future.
Having left her parents' Missouri farm for good and trained to become a telegraph operator in Kansas City, teenage Rose moves out to San Francisco and joins the thousands of "bachelor girls" supporting themselves.
