Lou and Oscar confront their sister and later Carl. Marie and Alexandra are close friends but Marie does not confide that she is in love with Emil and Alexandra does not suspect.Ĭarl shows up unexpectedly and stays a month with Alexandra. Marie is now married to Frank Shabata, a cruel, hot-tempered man who is jealous of her beauty and natural happiness. Meanwhile, Emil has fallen in love with the beautiful little girl of Chapter l. She is devoted to Emil's care and education and makes sure he goes to college, against the advice of Lou and Oscar. Sixteen years later and partly because of her visionary ways, Alexandra has the largest, most prosperous farm in the Divide. She even takes advice on animals from Crazy Ivar, a local insane hermit who has magical curative powers. She is open-minded and plants new varieties of crops she is the first to build a silo. In contrast, Alexandra decides to buy even more land while it is cheap. Many families in the area give up and move, including the Linstrums. Although Lou and Oscar are seventeen and nineteen years old, he is entrusting the farm to Alexandra.Īlexandra does well for three years until there is a bad drought. He calls together Alexandra and her three brothers (Lou, Oscar and Emil). Their father, John Bergson, is indeed dying at age forty-six. They amuse themselves by watching a beautiful little Bohemian girl named Marie. Emil's kitten gets stuck up a tree and a teenage boy named Carl Linstrum gets him down. Alexandra has seen a doctor who says there is no hope for their father. They are in the small town of Hanover, Nebraska, one blustery winter day. Alexandra, a tall, strong girl of twenty and her five-year-old brother Emil live on a farm.

O pioneer book