Ma, Pa, and Susie are homesteaders living in the newly acquired Dakota Territories. Because there are no trees on the prairie
from which to make wooden houses, their home is a
sodhouse built into the side of a hill. Susie and her father love the wide-open plains and the spirit of adventure, but Ma has fallen into a deep depression. She misses her upper-middle class life in Ohio, trees, and other people. She refuses to set foot outside the sodhouse and spends some days just lying in bed reading the same books over and over again.
Susie desperately wants to see her
mother happy again. When she finds a buffalo skull in the long grass, she asks Pa to take her with him to town so she can trade the skull for something that will make her mother happy. The general store has all kinds of strange odds and ends, including a snow globe and a recently acquired piano, but Susie knows that they have nothing to cure her mother’s sadness. She leaves the skull at the store for credit she’ll use later. They go to the Land Claims Office so Pa can put a claim on another piece of land to expand the farm. This means they are obligated to stay another five years, and Susie becomes even more worried about Ma.
On the ride back to the sodhouse, they see another wagon pulled by oxen. They hail the wagon, catch up, and meet a family from Iceland on their way farther west to start a homestead. Pa invites the whole family to stay the night in the sodhouse.
The parents have five children and a baby, but they are determined to have their own farm after coming from Iceland to Minnesota and working someone else’s land. Susie and Siggi, the oldest child, become friends. Siggi shows Susie his knife, and Susie gives Siggi her collection of eagle feathers. After a secret conference with his mother, Siggi goes out to their covered wagon and returns with a caged canary for Susie. He promises that the canary sings when the sun rises.
Susie knows the canary is just the thing to cheer her mother. The next morning, Susie forces her mother onto the roof of the sodhouse to watch the sunrise. As the sun comes up, the canary makes the most beautiful chirping noises. Susie’s mother smiles for the first time in a while, and Susie knows things are going to be better.