“Book Descriptions: After the death of their parents, twenty-year-old Mike Elrod and his eighteen-year-old sister, Lily, have sold the family house and bought a covered wagon. Leaving Effingham, Illinois, they are bound for Oregon. They are completely on their own through Illinois and Missouri, but in Kansas City they join a wagon train headed to Oregon. Along the way they pick up a dirty, hungry, fourteen-year-old girl, who ends up making a significant impact on their lives. Together the three face all kinds of trouble. The girl saves an old Indian from a beating and possible death. The two become best friends. The Indian teaches the young girl how to defend herself with a knife. She spends hundreds of hours practicing and becomes deadly with it. Her skill with a knife ends up saving Mike’s life. Driving a wagon westward brings its own set of challenges, but things go well for the three until an irate, revenge-seeking sheriff is out to hang the young girl.
Adventure abounds and Mike and Lily meet many intriguing characters, getting into both enjoyable and difficult situations. When Mike ends up getting engaged, he begins to have doubts about marriage and sets off to look for the young girl, who is now a woman, but has become an outlaw riding with an outlaw gang. While searching for her, he rescues a woman and her six-year-old boy, then ends up marrying that woman and brings her home to Santa Fe, where fireworks will surely erupt from his fiery fiancée.
Readers of Packy Trucker’s books are in for a treat when they find out just who the fourteen-year-old girl is. The story of Westward Wagon, while intense at times, will take the reader on a journey of humor, heartbreak, fights, and friendship.” DRIVE