The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister The Virginian is a 1902 novel by the American author Owen Wister, set in Wyoming Territory during the 1880's. It describes the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch and is considered the first true fictional western ever written, aside from short stories and pulp dime novels, though modern scholars debate this.

"In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril--the Kansas Indian Territory. The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone,...

The Ingalls family packs up their covered wagon and travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home in Kansas Territory, where wide open land stretches as far as the eye can see. On the prairie, they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.

A family travels to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house and meet a friendly neighbor.