Papa's Girls

Daniel Bodenstein was a court reporter, not a homesteader. When his wife convinced him to settle along Bad River in western South Dakota, he grumbled incessantly about their new surroundings. As he raised his daughters along the muddy river as a bereaved widower, he took most of his complaints to God, and the solution was not at all what he expected.

It was not a happy occasion that caused the family to move, and his daughters tangled romantic lives did nothing to add a sense of well-being t...