THE LOST WAGON
CRACKER BARREL TROUBLE SHOOTER
THE SPELL OF THE WHITE STURGEON
BIG RED
REBEL SIEGE
FOREST PATROL
BUCKSKIN BRIGADE
CHIP, THE DAM BUILDER
FIRE HUNTER
IRISH RED
KALAK OF THE ICE
A NOSE FOR TROUBLE
SNOW DOG
TRAILING TROUBLE
WILD TREK
THE EXPLORATIONS OF PERE MARQUETTE
OUTLAW RED
THE STORY OF THE MORMONS
Why would a farmer exchange his plowed fields for a wilderness? Why
would a husband and father take his family from civilization into an
untamed land? In the middle of the last century, thousands of Americans
pushed westward into the unknown--and Joe Tower, who had never been
fifty miles from his birthplace, was one of them. _The Lost Wagon_ tells
the gripping, warmly human story of why he ventured along the Oregon
Trail and of how he and his family met its hazards....
Ever since Joe and Emma had been married, they'd worked toward a place
of their own. But the down payment they'd finally made on their small
Missouri farm simply meant that Joe was trapped in debt. Although he was
just thirty-four, he began to despair of giving his children a better
life than his own. Barbara, his eldest, was beautiful; but her beauty
would be dimmed by drudgery. Lively Tad would be tamed too soon by hard
work. And the four younger ones--
Joe saw the opening of the Far West, where land was free, as the
family's only chance. But Emma, desperately fearful of the unknown, held
him back until sudden disaster robbed them of choice. Late in the
season, months behind the emigrant caravans, they started for Oregon,
one wagon alone on the vast prairie.
Guiding his mules along the trail, Joe unflinchingly faced the known
perils of blizzards, badmen, stampeding buffalo. But as they pushed ever
westward, he found much graver threats to his family circle in Barbara's
love for a hot-tempered stranger, in Tad's rash claim to man's estate,
and--most of all--in his own doubt of Emma's continued trust in him....
Packed with action and unmistakably genuine in its characters and
events, this story of a desperate journey to a promised land is tops for
authentic color and real excitement. With its portrayal of the conflicts
within a good marriage, the joys and uncertainties of young love, the
closeness of a family cut off from the world, _The Lost Wagon_ is a
well-rounded, many faceted novel. And its honest picture of the
fulfillment of one man's dream carries the magic of the promise that has
never failed our nation.