The Baker Family Saga Series

Previously published as Evelyn's anxious Bench,this is the first book in the Baker family saga. In 1842 the first wagon train left Independence, Mo. for the west coast. Jonathan Baker's family was grown and had families of their own, but Jonathan was the patriarch and when he decided he wanted his family to be among the first to settle the west coast and establish a town in the valley along the Willamette River he had his way. His oldest daughter, Evelyn didn't like it one bit. She had to leave her upper class society and home with all its amenities; but that was the least of it. She had to leave her servants behind because her father decided they wouldn't need them on the trail. Her thoughts were that he had no idea what servants were for and how much they were needed. She thought that was the worst thing that could happen to her, but soon found out it was the least of her problems. When tragedy struck, she had no one to turn to. She was determined to be a perfect woman and perfect women don's share their problems with their friends and family. This is what Gene Covington says about the story: As you travel the pages of the story you can literally feel the transformation of the folks as they go from a life of dependent luxury and of little self worth to people with strength, personal pride and integrity. It is of people who knew and cared little about God. As they journey from comfort in the east to build a new town in the west in the 1800's you experience their hardships, lost loved ones, pain and suffering. You will also become a member of the family and wagon train and share in their family love and happy and exciting experiences. Their discovery of God and the records his prophets left to help them live by is an exciting part of the book. As they travel Bear River I could smell the air, hear the roar of rapids and I longed to be there for I have traveled, fished and hunted that land. Thanks for taking me there once again.

This is the second book in the Baker family Saga. Dianna is growing up and Richard is grown and ready for Princeton. Jonathan's not doing well and his doctor son, Miles, can't discover why. A death in the family effects everyone. Chester Thomas is as old as Richard physically, but he is worse with age, while Richard is more mature. Dianna looks good to him, but he scares and sickens Dianna. Then three other men move into Ferndale - a man and his two grown sons, Dianna looks good to both of them but only the younger one pays any attention to Dianna. Unfortunately he does not impress Dianna, but his brother is the answer to her dreams. In the midst of this unhappy love triangle Chester Thomas comes back to the west intent on evil.

Alice, Donna and Rose are on Going to California in the middle nineteenth century. They won't be hunting for gold, they have plenty of wealth, but Rose's parents, Joanna and Stephen, have heard California is cultured and sophisticated, with libraries and museums the girls will benefit from exposure to. Ray doesn't want them to go. He doesn't see how it could have healed from the sin-sick place he visited a few years earlier. Joanna and Stephen find out, to their sorrow, that Ray was right. The three young ladies get an education, but it isn't the one planned by their parents. Drugged, kidnapped, left in the desert, and taken to the Unita mountains for a long hard winter give them an education of another kind. All of their fathers, of course, go looking for them and get lost themselves. Alice, in spite of herself, misses Ray, and Ray is frantic. He runs through an Indian war and the desert looking for her. How will they , or will they find their way home? What will they all learn as they go through the valleys of fear and depression? And where are their fathers?

Wayne and Robert, Julie Baker Colter and Adam's two oldest boys are visiting their cousin, Mary, in the south when the Civil war breaks out. Linda Baker, Miles and Jane Baker's youngest and their cousin, John, Joanna and Stephen's youngest are also there. Opinions are divided about "State's Rights" and whether or not the south has a right to secede from the Union. Opinion has always been divided in the Baker family about the issue, but now Mary is married to a southerner and Wayne and Robert are impressionable you, so they side with the south and go to war with their cousin's husband. Linda is, like her older sister, opinionated. and is vocal about her opinions. She wastes no time in telling her cousins how wrong they are and causes no end of trouble for Mary. Mary's and her husband ask the family to send for the errant girl, but time and change intervene and Linda and John leave Mary's, but not the south. Alice and Ray, intending to pick up the thier cousins and return home, are caught up in the war instead.

Richard is ready to come home from Princeton and expects his cousin,Larry, to be there to start his collage years. He expects to travel back to the west coast with whoever escorts Larry to Maryland. Larry doesn't want to go to collage, but his mother is adamant that he will go. Mother nature intervenes in the form of an angry mother bear protecting her cubs and Larry doesn't go east at all. That means Richard has to travel back to the Willamette Valley by himself. He walks a ways in his stocking feet, but travels the rest of the way with a wagon train where he meets both Sam and Chester Thomas. Alice is growing up enough to be given the responsibility of keeping her little sister, Linda, out of trouble. Linda and her cousin, Pearl, set a house on fire. Pearl runs away and meets a panther and Eli Thomas. Linda feels her punishment is unjust; after all, she didn't mean to set the house on fire. Meanwhile, Chester Thomas is planning revenge again, but this time his target isn't Dianna.