The final novel in the "Awakening Land" trilogy, in which Sayward Wheeler completes her mission, living to a ripe, old age, and seeing her family and friends make the transition from the ways of the wilderness to the ways of civilization.

The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of a middle-American landscape from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy earned author Conrad Richter immense acclaim, ranking him with the greatest of American mid-century novelists. It includes The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) and follows the varied fortunes of Sayward Luckett and her family...

A companion novel to The light in the forest. A white girl searches for her identity after having been taken prisoner as a child, adopted into an Indian family, married to an Indian, then forcibly returned to her white family.

Brewton's cattle empire includes a million acres of grazing land. Lutie marries him and they have a daughter Sara. Lutie goes alone to Denver where she and lawyer Chamberlain conceive a son Brock whom Jim later accepts with resignation. Long afterward Brock is killed by a posse and Susie brings Lutie and Jim together once more.