A tough Minnesota winter brings many changes to Kirsten's frontier life, including the new responsibility of helping her brother Lars set his traps and a move into a new house for her family.

Ten-year-old Kirsten is proud and excited when she finds a bee tree full of honey, one of the natural treasures of her Minnesota frontier world, but she exposes herself to great danger by trying to harvest the honey by herself.

Camping in the north woods, fishing, boating and hiking all suddenly become commonplace experiences to the members of the Sugar Creek Gang as they learn about the rites of Chippewa burial ceremonies from a real live Indian. But that is not all that happens as they visit the Indian cemetery. The mysterious white man wandering among the Indian grave-houses, his hiding behind the medicine man's grave-house and sudden departure in a motorboat, the sound...

The gang returns to Pass Lake, Minnesota, where they try to help find out why a kidnapped girl has not been returned even though the ransom has been paid.

Carrie tries to protect her Jewish friend from intolerant people.

Each member of Erik Sheepflattener's modern-day Viking-heritage family has a motto to live by. Erik is developing a motto he can truly believe in : AVOID STUFF. But when he and his older sister Brunhilde spend the summer with their rough-and-tumble cousins in Minnesota, axe-wielding Bru gets the idea to name and conquer all of Erik's fears.

In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family's flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America.

Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read.