How It All Goes Down
At the beginning of the book, the Witting family has been made up of the same three people for a while: Jacob Witting and his children, Anna and Caleb. His wife died after giving birth to Caleb, and though the children are older now, it's still difficult for Jacob to take care of them. On top of that, the kids long for a mother to bring some sunshine and life into their family. Anna in particular thinks wistfully about how her biological mother used to sing to them every single day. Then, one day, Jacob comes home and announces to his children that he's placed an ad in the newspaper for a new wife, and that a woman named Sarah has responded. Whoa.
Jacob and the kids start corresponding regularly with Sarah, who lives in Maine and has never been married before. On the flipside, the Witting family lives in the Midwest on a farm that's surrounded by prairies.
Finally, Sarah writes to say that she'll come visit them for a month to see how she likes it where they are—and also figure out whether she wants to marry Jacob. She lets them know she'll come on a train and be wearing a yellow bonnet, and also that she's plain and tall.
Sarah arrives and the Witting family is a bit shy around her, except for Caleb who talks her ear off and desperately wants her to be his new mother. Sarah slowly adjusts to their home, but seems to miss the sea so much—she always talks about the ocean and keeps her shell collection on the windowsill. This makes the kids worry that she won't want to stay because of the flat, ocean-less landscape around their home.
One day, their neighbor's family comes over to help Jacob plow the fields. Weirdly enough, the neighbor's wife, Maggie, is also a mail-order bride from Tennessee. (Apparently mail-order brides were all the rage in those days.) While she's there, she talks to Sarah about how lonely things can be and tells her that she'll always miss certain things about home.
Maggie isn't just a downer, though, and she also extends her friendship to Sarah and even gives her some plants to start a new garden and some live chickens. She encourages Sarah to learn how to drive the horse-drawn wagon so she can come visit Maggie and go into town. Sarah asks Jacob about this and he agrees to start teaching her how to drive.
Jacob goes out to fix the roof one day and Sarah helps him. Then a sudden storm blows in and the family rushes to get all their animals in the barn, and then they join the critters in the barn for shelter, too.
They spend all night in the barn, and the children watch as Jacob and Sarah stand next to each other and seem affectionate for the first time. This gives them hope that Sarah might decide to stay. After the storm, the family spends more time with Sarah and she seems to grow more comfortable in their home. However, the fact that she's learning how to drive the wagon so quickly makes the kids nervous; they're afraid she'll drive herself to the train station one day and never return.
When Sarah's finally ready to drive the wagon, she tells them she's going into town by herself. The whole day, the kids are super nervous and stressed out because they think Sarah's left. They're especially freaked out because Sarah didn't tell them why she was going—or what she was going to do. Dun dun dun…
At the end of the day, though, Sarah returns and shows them what she bought: colored pencils in blue, green, and gray. She got them so she can draw the ocean and put pictures of it up around their house. Sarah assures the children that although she misses the sea, she'd miss them even more if she left. The book ends with the Witting family all together, content and joyful in the knowledge that there will be a wedding soon and Sarah plans to stay with them for good. Yay.