Abstract:
Smoke in the Valley invites young readers to share pioneer adventures with Katie and Conrad. The adventures include travel by steamboat on the Missouri River, by covered wagon and horseback on the Oregon Trail. Readers share nightmare experiences when Katie and Conrad are captured and taken to a smoky valley beyond the trail. Peggy Albrecht’s earliest memories include daydreams about adventures in faraway places. Often they took place on the Oregon Trail of long ago. After a year of research to enlarge her exciting daydreams, she began writing Smoke in the Valley. She wove fiction together with realistic historical facts to create this 1863 pioneer adventure story.