During the frontier days, North Dakota was considered the land of opportunity by hardy pioneers eager to settle on 160 free acres offered by the government. All they had to do was prove up on the land for three years and it was theirs. The Morgan family found proving up was no simple task. The prairie they experienced was a killer—hot and dry in the summer, numbing cold in the winter, torrential rains that turned their sod house into a dripping muddy mess, tornadoes, prairie fires, and hordes of insects. But they were determined to stick it out...