Chapter One Summary

Sixteen-year-old Katherine Mary O'Fallon and her baby Cocker Spaniel Juno travel via railroad from Boston, Massachusetts through Montreal and on to Calgary, Alberta on a 30-day train journey which takes her through the blizzard of 1907 for an extended visit with her uncle John Kennedy in the Great Northwestern Territory of Canada. The worst winter in fifty years, according to the old Scotsman who shares a coach with Katherine, delays their trip on several occasions when the snow stops the engine cold.

Katherine's mother agrees to send her young daughter on this journey with the permission of Katherine's doctors. The young lady suffers pleurisy and the cold dry climate of Alberta, the doctors say, will be good for Katherine's lungs. Mother and daughter view Alberta on a map of North America, only to find the mapmaker had not much work to do...