Sam's father and stepmother's disagreement over whether horses or cattle are better for the land makes it difficult for Sam to predict what will happen when her stepmom gives her dad a wild mustang for his birthday.
The Fleuris are a poor family who live on a back-country ranch in Colorado. One day, a man from the government convinces them to turn their ranch into a place where visitors can sample ranch life as it was lived in the 1880s, which leads them from one well-intentioned misadventure to another.
After arriving on his uncle's ranch in California, a troubled fifteen-year-old boy from New York trains his own sheepdog, and finds that his experiences on the ranch help him to deal with himself, his family, and other people.
Contains a collection of letters written by the author to a former employer in Denver over the course of several years, in which she describes her frontier life homesteading in Burnt Fork, Wyoming.
In 1824 New Mexico, nine-year-old Josefina is happy when her grandparents and aunt come to visit, but she thinks she must choose between meeting her grandmother's expectations and being true to herself. Includes historical notes on women's rights in New Mexico in 1824 as well as a recipe for apple empanaditas.
