In the winter of 1898, a seventh-grade boy drops out of school to work with his father, the cook at Blackwater Logging Camp in Minnesota.

"Sacrificing dreams and risking family, five women follow their husbands to an isolated Minnesota settlement. Struggling to survive, they develop resilience but none are prepared for the challenges they face when starving bands of Santee Sioux (Dakota) take up arms against the whites during the 1862 Dakota Conflict. Laura Duley left Indiana as a newlywed. Promised a perfect life, she endured years on the hostile frontier and the loss of family only...