Heat lightning streaks across the dark Vermont sky. Little does Daniel, who will soon turn twelve, realize a June blizzard is roaring out of Canada right toward the Barker farm. Knee-deep snow will bury gardens and crops across New England. Come July, ice is seen floating in Pennsylvania ponds. Welcome to 1816, the Year Without Summer, or Starving Year. Fearing the weather has permanently turned cold, the Barkers join others heading west with hopes for a new beginning on the frontier. Steep mountains, a pirate den at Cave-in-Rock, and dangers on the mighty Mississippi await them. Long before wagons rolled along the Oregon Trail, Americans headed to the "first west." Travel with the Barker family from Vermont to Ohio by wagon and then by keelboat down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi. Their destination is New Design, the first American settlement in the Illinois County, part of the former French Colony of Upper Louisiana. Daniel's journey is full of surprises. Strange bones at Kentucky's salt licks. Someone named George Rogers Clark and men called the Long Knives. Did their Revolutionary War bravery really change America's history? Are there fish in the Mississippi as long as wagon and grass as high as a horses' eye in the Illinois Territory? Inspired by the Barker family's 1817 journey west.