A New York lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with a pioneer Bohemian girl.

History is thick with secrets in The Sugar Camp Quilt, seventh in the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series from bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini. Set in Creek's Crossing, Pennsylvania, in the years leading up to the Civil War, the novel follows Dorothea Granger's passage from innocence to wisdom against the harrowing backdrop of the American struggle over slavery. She discovers that a quilt she has stitched for her uncle Jacob with five unusual patterns...

Disguising herself as a boy and hiding in the melee of the gold rush to escape her past, Alex raises suspicions in proprietor Emaline, who extends protection around the unusual youth until an unexpected gold strike reveals dangerous secrets.

A frontier woman now, she had triumphed over the worst life could offer -- or had she?

Sixteen Civil War widows settle in Nebraska after they are wooed by a land speculator, only to discover that they were lured there in hopes that they would accept marriage proposals shortly after their arrival.