Katherine "Rusty" Taggart becomes a companion for the young son of the wealthy widower Chase McCandles. She quickly sees that what the boy needs is to spend more time with his father.

In 1872, Isabella Bird, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement. The letters that make up this volume were first published in 1879. They tell of magnificent, unspoiled landscapes and abundant wildlife, of encounters with rattlesnakes,...

"Few Americans at the end of the Mexican War in 1848 dreamed of the vast mineral potential of the country they had wrested from their southern neighbor. Few would have believed that within a generation this land would be criss-crossed by prospectors in search of gold and silver, that valuable deposits would be found, and that permanent settlement would rapidly follow. From 1859 and the first gold rush until the 1890 this wilderness became the setting...