Spanish Peaks Library District

James MacLaren's life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family. Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant,...

During a thirteen hundred mile journey from Kansas to the Bitterroot Mountains, Caleb O'Toole faces deserts, tornadoes, wolves, and the infamous Blackstone Gang as he tries to honor his promise to his dying mother and keep his sisters safe.

Based on true events, this compelling survival story by award-winning novelist Jane Kirkpatrick is full of grit and endurance. 1844. The Stevens-Murphy company left Missouri to be the first wagons into California through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mostly Irish Catholics, the party sought religious freedom and education in the mission-dominated land. When a heavy snowstorm hits in October, the party separates in three directions. Now young Mary Sullivan,...

A legend is born...and the saga begins. He'd come to the Rockies as a runaway twelve-year-old and grown into a living legend. He could out fight, out drink, out cuss, out dance, out ride and out lie any man alive. They called him Preacher...All Preacher has on his mind is a hankering for some companionship at the annual mountain man rendezvous in Popo Agie. But his plans change when he rides down into Fort Hall and finds he's the only man knowledgeable...

Ten-year-old Emmy Blue learns the true meaning of friendship--and how to quilt--while making a harrowing wagon journey from Illinois to Colorado with her family in the 1860s.

One man. One town. One Destiny.

"Settling the American West required true grit, fortitude, and when necessary, shedding blood. It also required men like Preacher and MacCallister to enforce peace in a land where the law was scarce--and justice was delivered from the barrel of a gun... Wagon trains carrying immigrants along the Oregon Trail are falling prey to outlaws. Most families surrender their valuables and goods peacefully, but anybody brave enough to resist gets a bullet....

"The Santa Fe Trail stretches from the Mississippi River to New Mexico Territory through the West's most savage lands. That's why a wealthy trader hires the mountain man called Preacher to keep his trade goods safe--and hopefully deliver a flock of pilgrims to a Promised Land. A young prostitute. The spoiled son of a wagon train owner--these are a few of the souls Preacher must protect. But then a rifle goes off at the wrong moment. A towering grizzly...

"From the bestselling author of Prayers for Sale, an inspiring celebration of sisterhood on the perilous Overland Trail "If you are an adventuresome young woman of high moral character and fine health, are you willing to travel to California in search of a good husband?" It's February, 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees the postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter...

"Upon uncovering her tyrannical father's malevolent plot to commit her to an asylum, Beth Rutledge fabricates a plan of her own. She will rescue her mother, who had already been sent to the asylum, and escape together on a wagon train heading west. Posing as sisters, Beth and her mother travel with the pioneers in hopes of making it to Idaho before the others start asking too many questions. Wagon-train scout Jake Holt senses that the mysterious...