A Settler's Year: Pioneer Life through the Seasons

By Kathleen Ernst
Photographs by Loyd Heath

"This is a book with great meaning for those of us who grew up on farms, and a book to be shared with young people eager to know more about pioneer life.” —Jerry Apps, author of Old Farm: A History and Whispers and Shadows: A Naturalist’s Memoir

A Settler’s Year provides a rare glimpse into the lives of early immigrants to the upper Midwest. Evocative photographs taken at Old World Wisconsin, the country’s largest outdoor museum of rural life, lushly illustrate stories woven by historian, novelist, and poet Kathleen Ernst and compelling firsthand accounts left by the settlers themselves.

In this beautiful book, readers will discover the challenges and triumphs found in the seasonal rhythms of rural life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As they turn the pages--traveling from sprawling farm to tidy crossroads village, and from cramped and smoky cabins to gracious, well-furnished homes--they’ll experience the back-straining chores, cherished folk traditions, annual celebrations, and indomitable spirit that comprised pioneer life.

At its heart A Settler’s Year is about people dreaming of, searching for, and creating new homes in a new land. This moving book transports us back to the pioneer era and inspires us to explore the stories found on our own family trees.