What young person, after hearing about Daniel Boone battling the wilderness and wild Indians, wouldn't choose the life of a pioneer instead of his own routine, if he could?

So it was with young Thatcher—and he had a chance to try it! 

A snowstorm started gently one night. It kept up all the next day until it turned into a howling blizzard—"cold enough to freeze a lizard's gizzard," Thatcher's father said—and the power lines blew down.

It was fun to have food cooked in the fireplace, to read the funnies by firelight, and to go upstairs to bed with a candle to light the way.

Although it distressed his parents that the television, the clock, the dishwasher, and the oil furnace wouldn't work, Thatcher didn't care—until he realized that his favorite toy, his electric train, wouldn't budge.

Read for yourself what Thatcher decided he would rather be than anything else—even more than a pioneer—something he had never thought of before!

From the dust jacket