The prairie was like a giant plate, stretching all the way to the sky at the edges. And we were like two tiny peas left over from dinner, Lester and me.

Louisa loves the Nebraska prairie, the only home she's ever known. It's a lonely place, surrounded by miles of wild, flat grasslands, but it's the wonderful kind of loneliness that comes of stillness and open sky and oneness with the land. A different kind of beauty enters Louisa's world when the new doctor and his wife, Emmeline, move to the prairie from New York City. Emmeline is the most beautiful person Louisa has ever seen, and she teaches Louisa to love poetry. But she is also frail and unsuited to pioneer life. Louisa wonders whether Emmeline will ever come to love the prairie as she herself does.