Young Pioneers

Book excerpt: Following the lives of Molly and David, the 'young pioneers' who embark upon a journey to the West, this novel is a story of spiritual strength and family unity in the face of difficulty and hardship. Molly and David played together as children and said they would get married as soon as they were old enough. And sure enough, when she was sixteen and he two years older, they married, and together they set out for the West, where the country had not yet been settled and they might find good land to farm. David's father gave them a team of horses, a wagon and his blessing; Molly's parents gave blankets and pillows, a ham and a cheese and some maple sugar, a pot and a pan and a skillet, and a copy of Tennyson's Poems. With David's gun and fiddle, and Molly's needles and thread, they had all they needed. Snug in the dugout under the prairie, their baby boy was born on Molly's seventeenth birthday. Soon the wheat was ripe and high and full of promise for the baby's future, a future that would be warm and safe and bright. The grasshoppers wiped out that promise. Within two days there was no wheat left - no crop, no money, no horses, and no way of providing against the bitter winter. Simply and vividly told, this story grew out of real experience. This is a novel which has moved and fascinated readers for more than fifty years, and has been translated into twenty languages.