In nineteenth century America, the medical profession was overwhelmingly male. Though women were to make a great mark as nurses during the Civil War, there were precious few female doctors in the country -- and even fewer doctors of any kind in the West.
When pioneering female doctor Amelia Dale Archer is passed over for the position of chief of staff at Philadelphia Hospital, she knows she will never get what is rightly hers because of the prejudice against women in medicine. It will be the same in New York, Boston, or Baltimore. Adee realizes that the only place that will allow her to practice medicine on equal terms with men is the West Coast. She joins a wagon train and heads for Los Angeles.
In the Conestoga wagon with sixty-one-year old Adee are her four granddaughters -- Cornelia, a lawyer; Octavia, a scholar; Lavinia, a tomboy; and Jessie, at fourteen, a hopeless romantic. It will take the collective knowledge, skill, wit, and love of Adee and her four girls to survive the rough three thousand mile crossing.
