Patricia Hermes

Elizabeth Barker continues to write to her "friend," her diary, as disease and lack of food further plague the suffering settlers at Jamestown.

Traveling with his owners from Missouri to Oregon in 1848, Koda, an energetic two-year-old quarter horse, finds the long journey increasingly tedious and tiring until his young owner goes missing on the trail and he must use all his skills to find her.

Late in 1848, nine-year-old Joshua McCullough starts a second journal, this time recording events in Willamette Valley, Oregon Territory, as his family and others they met on the trail begin to get settled.

Emma struggles with finding the perfect time to confess to her parents that she brought her pet ferret on vacation to Maine, and trying to save her favorite tree that a new neighbor wants to cut down.

When Emma and her brothers and sisters want to get a kitten and another ferret, and Emma wants their nanny to be the chaperone on her soccer team trip instead of her mother, the children decide to go on strike to try to force their parents to meet their demands.