Tora Anders weaves a web of lies that could cost her everything she cares for-including a successful future and the man she loves-but lead her to what her soul most desperately needs. Her sister, Elsa Ramstad, has everything her heart desires: a loving husband, a family she adores, and a fulfilling life at sea. Then tragedy strikes. Four years after her husband's disappearance, Kaatje Janssen struggles to raise two young daughters and tend her farm....

Ever so slowly Dakota Territory is being transformed from a vast prairie into rich farmlands. With the coming of the railroad, the small town of Blessing begins to prosper, and the Bjorklund family is reaping the promised harvest that had lured them from their beloved home in Norway.

The dream of their own farmstead and a good life in America had brought Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund across the Atlantic to pioneer the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. But Roald's tragic disappearance in a winter storm had turned Ingeborg's dreams into a living nightmare. Against nearly impossible circumstances and overwhelming grief, she struggles to keep the farm and her family together.

"Each member of Erik Sheepflattener's modern-day Viking-heritage family has a motto to live by. Erik is developing a motto he can truly believe in : avoid stuff. But when he and his older sister Brunhilde spend the summer with their rough-and-tumble cousins in Minnesota, axe-wielding Bru gets the idea to name and conquer all of Erik's fears."

"Though she has known hardships in her life, Ingeborg Bjorklund chooses to focus on all she has been given. Blessed with children and grandchildren, she enjoys the friendship and support of the entire Blessing, North Dakota, community. And after several years of widowhood, she has reached a place of contentment with her life. Meanwhile, her stepson Thorliff is raising two children alone since his beloved Elizabeth died. But there is a new schoolteacher...