内容简介：
In the year of 1861, young Jeanna Wilkes, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is heartbroken when her father leaves to fight in the Civil War, then is transferred to the Wyoming Territory and the war with the Sioux. Jeanna, at sixteen, finds a career as an actress in a small theater, but her world is disrupted when her father sends for her and her mother to join him after the peace treaty is signed. Although it means leaving the theater and her fiance, she agrees to accompany her mother on the long journey west. Jeanna and her mother find adventure, friends, and fear on their travels on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers to Kansas City and the long trek across the plains and dry, barren deserts. She learns the heartache of unexpected deaths and triumphs in newfound love, marriage, family, and the perils of building a homestead in the southwestern Wyoming desert.