Strangers & Pilgrims

The Bowers are not your typical, late-nineteenth-century homesteading family. They did not move west to farm Nebraska; they moved east. Matthew Bowers won't be working the land; his wife Lissa will—despite her diminutive size. And while Papa is dreaming of new ideas and Mama is farming, it will be 17-year-old Jolie who runs the household and mothers her three younger siblings. It's unusual, but the Bowers are determined to make this plan—unlike all of Matthew's others—work. That is, if Mama can get the team of horses to settle down and plow. If they can conquer the challenges of floods, grasshoppers and cash flow that keep them on the edge of survival. And if Jolie can keep every young man in the state from fighting over her.