Sarah Wheaton Timeline and Summary

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• Sarah Wheaton, a woman living in Maine with her brother and aunts, answers an ad that a man named Jacob Witting places in the newspaper. Jacob lives on a farm on the prairie with his two children, Anna and Caleb, and is looking for a new wife.
• She starts writing to Jacob and the children, and they end up getting to know each other—and the landscapes that they live in—a bit better.
• After some correspondence, Sarah decides to go off to visit the Witting family and brings along her cat, Seal. She's not sold on whether or not she'll marry Jacob yet and wants to meet them all first.
• When Sarah arrives, she's just as described in her letters: plain and tall. She's a bit shy around the Wittings at first, and they're shy around her, too. Go team.
• Although Sarah starts to form relationships with Jacob and the children, she still misses her hometown desperately, and she longs for the ocean.
• One day, Sarah meets their neighbors, Matthew and Maggie. Maggie is a mail order bride, too, and she sympathizes with Sarah's plight. She tells her that there will always be things she'll miss from home… but that she can make a new home here, too. Phew.
• After this, Sarah tries to put down roots at the Witting farm in the form of starting her own garden and having pet chickens.
• She also insists that Jacob teacher how to drive the wagon so she can go into town on her own, which he agrees to do.
• One day, a squall blows in and Sarah takes refuge in the barn with Jacob and the kids. She sets up a little picnic and stands by the window with Jacob, who puts his arm around her.
• Sarah takes learning how to drive super seriously and is soon ready to go into town on her own, much to the chagrin of the kids, who are terrified that she'll never come back.
• She goes into town by herself and returns at the end of the day with a package full of colored pencils in the color of the sea. Now she can draw pictures to hang up and bring the sea to their little prairie home.
• At the end, Sarah has decided to stay with the Wittings for good and is planning her wedding to Jacob. What a happy ending.