During their first four years of marriage, Laura and Almanzo Wilder have a child and fight a losing battle in their attempts to succeed at farming on the South Dakota prairie.

Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.

The Ingalls family packs up their covered wagon and travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home in Kansas Territory, where wide open land stretches as far as the eye can see. On the prairie, they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.