In 1856, a cholera outbreak forces nine-year-old Meg Wells to leave her family and comfortable life in St. Louis to live with relatives in frontier Kansas.
Meg records in her diary the events from July to November of 1856, when her family is reunited and must face challenges from fires to pro-slavery border ruffians who are trying to take over Kansas Territory.
Meg continues to write in her diary about her family's adventures in the Kansas prairie in 1856 as they try to return to a more normal life after surviving a cholera epidemic, separation, and invading Border Ruffians.
Meg Wells begins her diary in 1848 when she leaves her family behind to live with relatives in Kansas in order to escape the cholera epidemic in St. Louis.
