In this book Esarey makes the Indiana of the past as real as the Indiana of today. These sketches, which stand equally well for the whole Midwest, tell of early settlement by a variety of movers seeking homes in a Beulah land, of the raising of rough cabins in primitive clearings, of the trees and the flowers and the wild herbs that covered the ground, of farm life in the 1850s, and finally of the growth of politics and government.