Ten-year-old Kirsten is proud and excited when she finds a bee tree full of honey, one of the natural treasures of her Minnesota frontier world, but she exposes herself to great danger by trying to harvest the honey by herself.

When Laura and her family move from Wisconsin to Kansas, they make friends with a helpful neighbor who comes to their aid later when they settle in the Dakota Territory.

Josefina Montoya and her sisters love the comfortable traditions of life on her family's New Mexican rancho, but they are suspicious of the changes their Tía Dolores is bringing to the household because they fear they will lose their memories of their mother.