A local narrator recollects encountering a traveling father and his young daughter who settle on the outskirts of a growing Midwestern city, and chronicles the child's daily life and the community around her. The narrative moves between domestic scenes and seasonal hardships, neighborhood politics, coming-of-age experiences, courtship and rivalries, and episodic adventures. Perspectives alternate to show the girl's feelings and the narrator's memories, with letters, separations, returns, and a marriage that mark personal change. Underlying these events is the gradual transformation of the town from frontier settlement to a bustling city.