Her new life as a prairie schoolteacher means hardship -- and love. Teaching in a one-room prairie schoolhouse in Nebraska in 1886 means more than giving lessons to 32 very different students. For 15-year-old Margaret, who has left Chicago to start a new life, it also means learning to survive savage blizzards, a deadly plague, and awful loneliness. Then she meets Gerald, the handsome young easterner who is teaching in a nearby town. And she finds herself drawn more and more to brooding, handsome Robert, the 18-year-old farmer's son who is her worst pupil.