Prairie Challenge and Beyond

The author writes in her Preface: "This is for the children of the Prairie and their experiences of making do what was not readily available to them. Their daily adventures and hardship living on the prairie. Their hard work and country schools, their play time, and how they entertained themselves. Dedicated especially to the Germans from Russia, who came here with high hopes and were the major settlers in the Dakotas and surrounding areas."

Prairie Challenge and Beyond, covers the story of a young lady whose parents were immigrants from Russia but were of German decent. She came from a very large family.

The story depicts the struggles and good times of a child and the hardships she faced during the depression and the dust storms areas, working her way through high school with very little help from her parents.

It covers what prairie life was about, the work routine, summer or winter, the difficulty transporting to school, either by foot or a horse and buggy. The ingenious ways these children entertained themselves without a lot of toys, and their humorous ways in their enterprising episodes and much more.

It makes a good comparison as to how times have changed and to the children living at this age.

The author:

Esther M. Vogele Williams was born on the Dakota Prairie, and is a graduate of Roscoe High School, Roscoe, SD, in 1938. She attended Webster Business College in Los Angeles. She sang professionally for a while. She is the author of Katrina's Garden of Hope, about the Germans from Russia who settled in the Dakotas in the early 1900s.