Torrie Author:Annabel & Edgar Johnson The year was 1846 and Torrie Anders was fourteen--practically grown up unless you listened to her parents. But then, they were slightly out of touch with the world anyway. Her father was a thin bespectacled school teacher, and her mother, Torrie knew, had had to marry him or settle for spinsterhood. And now, of all things, her parents were plann... more »ing to go by wagon train to California! Why, they wouldn't last two weeks.
The "easy" first month, slugging through rain and mud from St Louis to Independence, proved to Torrie that the whole idea was a terrible mistake. But she did have to admit that things livened up when Luke Egan joined their train. From his red tangled hair to the prancine buckskin he rode, he was exciting to watch, a far cry from Mr Jessen, the silent young man her father had hired to drive their team.
It was a long trip to California, though, and a lot harder than anyone could have believed. Torrie came to realize that she would have to revise her judgment of people--that gold-rimmed spectacles or a standoffish silence need not mean weakness, and that a prancing buckskin did not necessarily mean strength.« less