Signe

In the sixth book of the Homesteaders series, Signe and Elna return as teachers to their respective communities to teach for the spring term. For Elna, this will be her last stint as a teacher. She and Trygve will marry in the summer, when she is sixteen and he is eighteen, and go on to claim the land that the Ytterhorn clan has worked since their arrival in America. Signe, however, resists the idea of getting married. She enjoys the benefits inherent in a career of her own, and she explores medicine as an alternative to teaching. Why would she want to settle down into the role of wife and mother when the future is so filled with possibilities?

The answer to that question comes in the form of a tall, honest, ambitious young man named Lars. Newly immigrated to the Dakota Territory, eighteen-year-old Lars is setting up a homestead for himself, and he wants Signe to teach him how to read and write English, skills that will greatly improve his chances for success. He is immediately attracted to her, and Signe, despite her best efforts to remain unaffected by his bright smile, is drawn to him as well. Still, she remains firm: she is not interested in marriage.

During the ensuing fall term, a smallpox epidemic strikes the community where Signe teaches, and Signe, immune after having had the disease a few years earlier, helps the settlers who become sick. One of those unfortunate individuals is Lars, and in caring for him as he teeters on the brink of death, Signe discovers that her future can be all that she wants it to be—and more.