One Big Open Sky

Gr 5 Up–It is 1879 and pioneers are pouring across the country, seeking free land in the West. Lettie, her parents, and her brothers leave everything she has ever known in Mississippi to chase the dreamland and prosperity in Nebraska. Sylvia follows her husband’s dream out West, but struggles with all she has lost. Philomena seeks independence and freedom as she heads to Nebraska to take up her new job as a schoolteacher. Each of these Black women fights for their dreams and their future along the wagon trail in this emotional novel in verse. Will the travails of the trail overtake them, or will they find the new home and hope they so desperately long for? Set in the rarely told history of Black homesteaders during the Westward Expansion, this novel shines in its depiction of life on the trail and with its in-depth focus on relationship dynamics and self-realization. The varying viewpoints of the multigenerational narrators add depth and breadth to the storyline and character growth. Readers will find themselves cheering for and crying with these pioneering women as their expedition unfolds.