Kate Bates is the youngest of sixteen children. Daughter of a rich but miserly and controlling father she defies his plans for her and leaves home at eighteen, looking to make her own way in life and find a man, a farm and a family. Living in a man's world, Kate is more than ready to do a man's work in order to achieve her dreams. She becomes a teacher but doesn't give up the ambition to own and run a farm. Kate is courted by two gentlemen and, as she marries one, her life seems to be heading the right way. However, one after another disaster plagues Kate and her family testing her unbreakable will, but she continues to plough through, never losing her determination to live her life her own way.

Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) was a Wabash County, Indiana, native who became a self-trained American author, nature photographer, and naturalist. Stratton-Porter wrote several best-selling novels in addition to columns for national magazines. Her best known novels Freckles, A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Harvester are set in the wooded wetlands and swamps of northeast Indiana. Stratton-Porter loved the area and its wildlife and had documented them extensively.