Here are nine stories of the pioneer West and the men and women who rode its plains, tamed its forests, faced its dangers, and found love in the wilderness. One tell of a mother's love for her son; one of a bitter marriage; another of a warm and fumbling frontier courtship; and still another of a passion as deep as the wilderness in which it was conceived. From the very first page, where you meet the Mercy family building their homestead in the Oregon forest, you'll share with the trail breakers and homesteaders the heartbreaks and triumphs, dangers and victories experienced by those lusty Americans pioneering a vast new land.