Copyright

Clarion Books

3 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Copyright © 2020 by Linda Sue Park

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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Cover illustration © 2020 by Dion MBD

Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Names: Park, Linda Sue, author.

Title: Prairie lotus / Linda Sue Park.

Description: Boston ; New York : Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2020] | Summary: In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, part-Asian Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves. Includes author’s note.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019007372 | ISBN 9781328781505 (hardcover)

Subjects: | CYAC: Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Frontier and pioneer life—Dakota Territory—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction. | Racism—Fiction. | Dressmaking—Fiction. | Dakota Territory—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.P22115 Pr 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

ISBN: 978-0-358-36014-8 (signed edition)

eISBN 978-0-358-33083-7
v1.0220

Dedication

To all those whose stories have
been erased or
silenced in the past:

May your stories sing and shape
and color the future.

Dakota Territory
April 1880

1

“SHOULD BE OUR LAST DAY,” Papa said when they stopped to make camp. He unhitched the tired horses from the wagon, then led them down a little draw to water, while Hanna began clearing the ground for a fire.

They had journeyed for almost a month since leaving Cheyenne, their most recent stretch in near three years of travel. Three years without a real home. Tomorrow they would reach their destination: LaForge, a railroad town in Dakota Territory.

Hanna was looking forward to cooking supper. They had been able to buy groceries in North Platte, but since then, it had rained for almost a solid week. They’d had to make do with meal after meal of stale biscuit and cold beans.

She had put dried codfish to soak the night before. Soup, she thought. With onions and potatoes.

Papa returned with the horses and a bucket of water. He fastened the horses to their picket lines, then left again to gather some brushwood.

“I’m going to make soup,” she told him when he returned to start the fire.

“About time we had a hot meal,” he said.

Hanna bristled at the note of petulance in his voice; the dreary weather of the past week was hardly her fault. But she said nothing, not wanting to start a row.

“Sky’s clearing,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be easier to scare up a rabbit or something.” He went off with his gun on his arm, his long-legged strides covering ground quickly.