Even though she is sad to leave her home in South Dakota, Rose has many new experiences as she and her parents and the Cooley family make their journey to Missouri.
Rose meets a girl named Alva, a neighbor at her Missouri farm, and together they explore the hills, pick pokeweed, explore a cave, and have other adventures in the Ozark Mountains.
After moving from South Dakota, Rose Wilder eventually makes friends, proves herself to be the best speller in her class, and copes with a difficult teacher at her new Missouri school.
Having left her parents' Missouri farm for good and trained to become a telegraph operator in Kansas City, teenage Rose moves out to San Francisco and joins the thousands of "bachelor girls" supporting themselves.