Barbara Baum, the heroine of the companion books, Bread-and-Butter Indian and Bread-and-Butter Journey, was, in fact, a real person—the great-great-grandmother of Miss Colver's husband. The family journals describe the hair-raising action which takes place in the first book, as well as the subsequent journey which the family undertook in 1784.

For a little girl, it was one thing to leave the relative safety of her pioneer settlement, and another thing altogether to cross a mountain wilderness with only two boys as guides.

Shortly after the incident in Miss Colver's Bread-and Butter Indian, Barbara Baum says her dismayed goodbyes to the cabin where she was born, and the friends and treasures that had always meant home to her. Father had gone ahead, over the Alleghenies, to find a new homestead in western Pennsylvania; and Barbara, her mother, and another family set off alone, with only Barbara's fifteen-year-old brother, Jonas and a friend as trail guides.

As illness and near-tragedy intervene along the wilderness road, Barbara finds that her treasures were not really so important, and that home is not simply a place after all.

Drawing from the history of her own family, Anne Colver describes the real-life journey of a little girl on the edge of growing up. Garth Williams' delightful illustrations further amplify this very human story of pioneer life.

From the dust jacket

Barbara Baum, the heroine of the companion books, Bread-and-Butter Indian and Bread-and-Butter Journey, was, in fact, a real person—the great-great-grandmother of Miss Colver's husband. The family journals describe the hair-raising action which takes place in the first book, as well as the subsequent journey which the family undertook in 1784.

From the dust jacket