When Abbie Mckenzie was young she dreamed of becoming a lovely lady like her grandmother. She wanted to paint beautiful pictures and become a world famous singer. She even gets a chance to fulfill those dreams when the dashing young doctor hears her singing, falls in love, and offers to take her East and away from Iowa with him. But people's ideals change sometimes. Abbie finds love with poor but steady Will Deal. She gives up everything to move to Nebraska with him. Many obstacles awaited them but together they made a happy life. Abbie and Will were barely getting by, but their children were as happy as kings. Maybe that's because their lovely mother brought them up "with a song upon her lips and a lantern in her hand".

As Abbie Deal grows old, she realizes that none of her old dreams will ever come true for her but they will through her children. And as an old woman, she can look back on her life with a smile. This book is beautiful and touching and will bring tears to the reader.

Aldrich’s pioneer woman was based on her mother, and the integrity of her depiction of life in a sod house in the late nineteeth-century Nebraska.

I read this in high school and loved it; waited many years to find it.