Clara

They might be young, but they know what is in their hearts.

After the death of both parents along the Oregon Trail, Clara Alderman, just shy of turning fifteen, and the oldest of four siblings, finds herself the head of her family. Fortunately, her older friend and mentor, Pearl, follows a prayer prompting to return to the wagon train. Arriving in time to witness her father’s death, Pearl insists on becoming the Alderman children’s guardian. Michael Stanwyck, the freighter and tradesman, who follows Pearl back to the train, overcomes the wagon master’s reluctance to write a guardianship document when he volunteers to marry Pearl and share the responsibility. Michael’s employee, Will Clayton, volunteers to marry Clara, but the Stanwycks refuse, citing Clara’s youth. Clara felt an attraction to Will from the first moment she met him, but could she expect a good future married to a young man whose goal it is to make his fortune in the California gold fields?

To escape the grinding poverty of their Kentucky home, Will Clayton and his best friend, Jeremy, accept jobs as bullwhackers for Mr. Stanwyck’s three freight wagons, which provided a means to travel to California where they plan to make their fortunes mining for gold. Will soon realizes there is something he might want more—a future with Clara. However, between her guardian’s refusal to allow then to court until she is sixteen and having nothing to offer, he decides to stick with his original plan. Is there a fortune waiting in California? Is his future in the gold fields or back in the Eagle Valley, where the Stanwycks and Alderman children circled their wagons for the last time?