Sixteen-year-old Jenny faces many challenges on an overland journey to California in 1853 with the acting company that she inherited from her father.

Based on an incident on the Oregon Trail recorded by pioneer Ezra Meeker: "the meeting of eleven wagons returning and not a man left in the entire train; all had died, and been buried on the way, and the women returning alone." The novel explores the possible fate of these women, bonded by loss, growing in faith and fighting for survival.

"Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos....

Lee Westfall, a young woman with the magical ability to sense the presence of gold, must flee her home to avoid people who would abuse her powers, so when her best friend Jefferson heads out across Gold Rush-era America to stake his claim, she disguises herself as a boy and sets out on her own dangerous journey.

While traveling west with her family in 1850, a young girl makes a patchwork quilt chronicling the experiences of the journey and reserves a special patch for her pet hen Josefina.

Shannon's harrowing debut brings humanity and empathy to the story of the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who set out from Independence, Mo., for California in 1846, and were snowbound and forced to resort to cannibalism. It's been 13 years since Mrs. Jacob Klein ran away from her abusive family in Cincinnati at age 15 and joined up with the doomed wagon train bound for California. One of the survivors, Mrs. Klein, is now a schoolteacher married...

A desperate mother takes Jenny Jones' place in front of a firing squad in exchange for Jenny's promise to see her daughter safely to California. Though she and the six-year-old Graciela get off to a rocky start, Jenny will do everything in her power to keep her promise, even with the child's cousins in hot pursuit. Then she is mysteriously drawn to the handsome cowboy Ty Sanders, and though neither know it yet, their purpose is the same.

A compelling and beautifully told story of extreme events that resonates the terrible cost of the American Dream. A powerful work of fiction that recreates one of the most tragic events of pioneer America, as a wagon train crosses the country to the Promised Land of California, only to be halted in the final stages by an early winter in the high reaches of the mountains. the emigrants endure the bitterest of winters with only the most slender of supplies?d...

In 1848, while on a wagon train headed for Oregon, fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is kidnapped by Pawnee Indians and then falls in with a one-armed trapper who teaches him how to live in the wild.

As children, Clint "Buff" Belmet and May Bell meet and promise to always love each other as they travel west with their families. But a few years later Indians kill Buff's parents and kidnap May. He becomes a wagon driver so he can look for May, and finally after many struggles, Buff finds her.