On the Banks of Plum Creek

Laura invites her friends at school to her party. They scrub their house clean and decorate and Ma makes vanity cakes. The girls from town arrive, all happy except Nellie, who complains about the gravel and shoos Jack away from her. When Ma greets the girls, Nellie tells her that she didn’t wear her best dress for just a country party, and Laura resolves to get even with her.

The girls go down to Plum Creek together. While playing in the water, Laura crowds Nellie near the crab’s rock and then kicks a big splash of water so he’ll come running out at her. Nellie runs screaming into the muddy water, and as Laura intended, when Nellie finally comes out of the mud, leeches are stuck to her legs and feet. Laura laughs at her as she screams and kicks until Mary makes Laura pull them off her. The girls go inside for vanity cakes and cold milk, and everyone enjoys the rest of the party but Nellie.

One Saturday night, Pa tells his family that he met the home missionary, Reverend Alden, and told him they’d go to the new church that Sunday. At church, people all begin to gather solemnly in the new building. Laura sits perfectly still while the minister prays, and a woman comes and gathers her and her sisters for Sunday-school. The lady gathers all the children around her, introducing herself as Mrs. Tower, and then begins to tell them the story of baby Moses. Laura doesn’t pay attention since she already knows the story. While the minister delivers his sermon, Laura looks out the open windows and studies her hands.

On the way home, Pa and Ma talk about how much they enjoyed getting to attend services again. The Ingalls begin attending church every Sunday, although the Reverend Alden is only there every few weeks since he travels. Rather than buy new boots with his little money, Pa donates it to Reverend Alden for the belfry.

The wheat is ripening perfectly, and Pa is a week away from harvesting. The crop is abundant, and the Ingalls expect to be significantly wealthier after harvesting it.

One day, as Laura sits facing the open door, she sees something dim the sunlight. Jack begins to growl and then a large grasshopper hits Laura on the head. Grasshoppers begin to rain down from the sky. The sound of them hitting the roof is reminiscent of hail. Suddenly, Pa runs outside to check the wheat-field. Pa grabs old dirty hay from the manure pile and begins making little piles of hay out near the field, with Ma lighting them on fire, trying to drive the grasshoppers away with the smoke. The grasshoppers eat the grass and the tops of the willow trees and the entire garden.

All night long Pa continues to work to keep the grasshoppers out of his field, only briefly coming inside to eat dinner. At noon the next day, he comes in, his face blackened with smoke, and tells them it’s no use, the grasshoppers have continued to eat the wheat despite the smoke. Ma tells him they’ve made it through hard times before. They have lunch and then Pa goes to sleep. The grasshoppers continue to eat all the vegetation in the days following. The birds and rabbits are forced to leave with nothing to eat, except for the birds that stay and eat the grasshoppers.

That Sunday Pa, Mary, and Laura walk to Sunday school, the prairie around them brown and bare, millions of grasshoppers whirring over it. Many of the people in town return east. Mary and Laura stop attending school because they can’t walk barefoot on the grasshoppers. Meanwhile, Pa goes back to work, plowing the bare wheat-field to prepare for the following year’s crop.

Plum Creek is almost dry from the lack of rain and Laura is miserable from the way the grasshoppers have changed the landscape. Laura notices that all the grasshoppers are sitting still with their tails in the ground. She goes to ask Pa about it but notices he’s stopped plowing. She follows him into the house, where he tells Ma the grasshoppers are laying eggs. He notes that when the eggs hatch, they won’t have a chance of making a crop. Pa and Ma don’t know what to do. Pa gets a determined look in his eye and says that they’ll figure it out somehow and goes into town to figure out his next step.

At supper, Pa tells them that he’s going to return east in the morning, where the grasshoppers have not destroyed the crops and he can find work. Ma says they can get along without him but worries about him traveling hundreds of miles on his own. He plays the fiddle for them one last time. In the morning, he kisses them all and leaves to head east.

Without vegetation or rain, the landscape is dry and dotted with dust devils. Their well runs dry, Spot becomes bone-thin, and the family spends their day trying to survive the heat indoors. Laura goes weekly to Mr. Nelson’s to see if there’s a letter from Pa, but nothing has arrived. They stop going to Sunday school to save their shoes, and instead spend Sundays reading from the Bible.

One day, they feel a cool breeze and when they go outside, they see a cloud that grows larger and moves across the sky. They all hope the cloud comes closer and suddenly it does, breaking into rain right above them. It cleans the air and cools them all down. The next day, when the sun is out again, grass has once more begun to sprout.

Laura deeply misses Pa but stops talking about it to Ma because Ma says the time will go by faster if they think of other things. The grasshoppers begin to leave in small groups and every Saturday Laura goes to Mr. Nelson’s to check if a letter has arrived. They all begin to worry something has happened to him when week after week passes with no word.

One Saturday afternoon, Mr. Nelson comes across the footbridge with a letter. Laura runs back to the house, and they open it to find paper money inside. Ma cries while she reads the letter. Pa had traveled 300 miles to find wheat-fields to work and will stay there as long as the work lasts.

Mornings begin to get a bit chillier and then the first frost arrives. Snow begins to fall but Pa still has not returned. They run out of firewood and begin collecting dead branches to burn.

One day, Mrs. Nelson visits with her little daughter Anna, who can’t speak English. When they try to play paper dolls with her, she tears one in half, so Laura gets her ragdoll, Charlotte. When Mrs. Nelson leaves, Anna refuses to give Charlotte back. Ma tells her not to be selfish and makes her give Anna the doll and Laura grieves all evening.

The next day, Mr. Nelson brings them wood. Cold rain continues to fall and freeze. Laura worries about Pa and continues to go to the Nelsons’ to see if there is any letter. One day she sees Charlotte frozen in a puddle in the Nelsons’ yard. Her hair has been ripped and one eye is missing. Laura brings her home, and Ma repairs her.

That night sleet falls as they sleep, and they hear a loud crash waking them. Then, they hear Pa’s voice. Mary and Laura rush into his arms. Pa says he had been working from dawn to dusk, and then when he started home, he didn’t want to stop to write. Pa says he has money now and at the first opportunity they’ll all go to town.