Laura Ingalls Wilder's fifth novel, based on events in her early teens. After her family's crops are destroyed by grasshoppers, her youngest sister is born and her older sister loses her eyesight from an attack of scarlet fever, their only hope is to travel to a railroad camp in Dakota Territory, where Pa has been offered a job as a supervisor. Laura becomes her blind sister's eyes, is warned away from rough railroad men, and gets to know her cousin Lena.