Actually, Willow's book is pretty good, mostly because I think the shortness of these books works in its favor this time. There's enough trail info, but the misery doesn't go on for pages and pages and pages.
Willow's father died during a river crossing, so most of the book is about trail life and her river fear. Her mother remarried and the stepfather is a little too strict for my liking. He's okay by the end, of course. Willow's younger sister got her foot crushed by the wagon and Willow's got a dog that needs constant minding. The only real fault with this one is that you're left wondering if they ever made it.
Ellen's one of my favorites from this series. Her book isn't incredibly interesting, because it gets a bit repetitive, but I think it tells the story well. Her father is away from their remote farm, leaving Ellen and her grandfather alone. Her grandfather ends up injuring himself and Ellen has to devise a way to get him back to the house, then fix the windmill he fell trying to fix, then find all the cows that got out when he left the dumb gate open, including her father's prized bull. It's a lot of her riding her horse back and forth, talking to the cat and, once he wakes up again, her grandfather. But it's a good, unusual adventure story. You don't see many female ranchers from the 1800s. Ellen's character is what makes this a really good book, not so much the story.
Alexia is one of my other big faves. Her father's dragging her all over the country with his schemes, but he seems to finally have found a decent job and they've lived in the same boarding house for a year. Alexia works with the designer/seamstress (called a modiste) who runs the boarding house, as she has arthritis and is struggling.
Alexia is afraid her father's lost his job and he's really pretty much an ass, so when she stands up for the modiste and doesn't let her father pull a get rich quick scam on her, it really makes you love her. She's offered an apprenticeship while her father is told to vacate quickly and he won't be arrested. Alexia chooses to make a life for herself and learn an honest trade, while you get the sense her father will never really learn.
She's another great personality like Ellen, but I like the story better in this one, so it's a better full package.
Evie's book is hard to read because the poor Irish racist neighbor brothers are just such assholes. Evie and her father are going to buy her mother today from the pair's former master. They'd been freed by the second master they had, who never bought the mother. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but I like this girl and so would Addy Walker. They'd totally be friends.
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