Publisher's Synopsis
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, andAunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to becarried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; andthis room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or fourchairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a littlebed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar-except a small hole dug in theground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwindsarose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middleof the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great grayprairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached tothe edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with littlecracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the longblades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and grayas everything else
