Poor financial conditions influence the Ingalls family to move to Winoka when Mary goes there to teach at the Blind School. They meet Albert, an orphan who Charles forms an attachment to, even though Laura catches him stealing from the hotel that Charles was managing and Caroline was running the kitchen/dining room for.

While Mary is going to teach at the Blind School in Winoka, and since financially they can't make a living in Walnut Grove the rest of the Ingalls family goes to Winoka, too. Charles gets a job managing a hotel and Caroline runs the Kitchen/Dining room. They make the acquaintance of an orphan, Albert who befriends the Ingalls.

Trying to convince Tom Carlin, blinded by a childhood bout with the measles, that he can lead a productive life, Adam Kendall battles Tom's bitter, skeptical father and is unexpectedly aided by the underdog Winoka Warriors, who have just lost their star player to a rival football team.

Amelia Bevins is a new girl at school. Laura asks her to go home with her the afternoon of her first day at school to work on their essays and they go by the Blind School on the way home. When they get there, Laura and Albert and Andy start making fun of the over-weight man who has started working there. Amelia makes an excuse and runs off. Unbeknownst to them, it's her father. Before they leave, Adam comes out and introduces Mr. Bevins and Laura realizes her mistake. That evening when Mr. Bevins goes home, he overhears his daughter telling his wife how her father embarrasses her because of his weight. He makes up a job on the railroad that will give him a lot of more money and convinces the people at the blind school that he has no family in town but could save the money he's been spending on the room if they'll let him stay in his storage room. They notice that he only works outside on the roof late at night and he works inside all day, but he says it's cooler that way. When he accidentally falls through the roof and gets hurt, the doctor tells Adam that he could have surgery and get better but that Mr. Bevins has given up the will to live.

Caroline talks to Mary and Mary convinces Charles that he should not have to stay in Winoka if he is unhappy. So, the Ingalls decide they are going back to Walnut Grove. They invite Albert to go back with them. The children at the blind school give them a horseshoe to hang over their door and sing them home with the song about a horseshoe over the door. The Garveys and the Olsens go home, too.

The Ingalls, Garveys, Olsens, and Albert get back to Walnut Grove to find it run down and in shabby condition. Lars Hansen found Walnut Grove over 50 years ago, and now that it is in this poor condition, and he suffered a stroke, he is much like the town--on its last leg. The Ingalls and the Garveys go to the farms around town to let everyone know of their plans to fix the town up to restore it to its former glory.

Laura Ingalls becomes jealous of the extra attention her father pays to new family member, Albert, especially after the boy is given a new calf to raise for the county fair, and asked to call Charles "Pa".

Sterling Murdoch arrives in Walnut Grove planning to found a newspaper. The fledgling newspaper is The Pen and the Plow, and its star reporter is none other than one Harriet Olesen. At first, everyone including the Ingalls welcome the newspaper, but the completely inaccurate content of the "Harriet's Happenings" column soon has some people losing their enthusiasm. Nels reminds his wife that a reporter's job is to be accurate, but Mrs. Olesen suggests she's merely "reporting the fact that they are rumors"; he is even more frustrated when she suggests holding an unethical sale at the store. Later, Nellie loses a spot in the county's spelling bee to Erich Schiller, the son of German immigrants and outstanding student in his class. Mrs. Olesen is outraged and in her next column, writes a story suggesting that Erich's parents are illiterate. Erich is deeply upset by the story and it causes him to perform badly at the county spelling bee; he even drops out of school. With some help from Charles, Mr. Schiller tells Erich that he is proud of his son and has a great future ahead of him; this is enough to get him to come back to school. Charles is unable to make headway with Murdoch about his newspaper, since Murdoch reasons that people like reading their names in print and it means more advertising and money. Laura and Albert get some revenge when they switch the printing plates and publish some unflattering stories about Nellie and Mrs. Olesen, and an ad that suggests a 100 percent-off sale at the Mercantile. When Caroline refuses to punish Laura and Albert over their trick, Mrs. Olesen responds by publishing a story stating that Charles fathered Albert outside his marriage (along with another item that suggests that the Garveys are heavily in debt). An angry Charles has enough and, at church on Sunday, exposes "The Pen and the Plow" as yellow journalism, and that everyone else shares in the blame for reading the paper even though they knew the stories were clearly untrue. It isn't long before the newspaper is forced to stop publishing and Murdoch is driven from town. In the close, Laura tells how she hoped that someday, Walnut Grove would get a legitimate newspaper.

Mary Ingalls happily accepts Adam Kendall's long-awaited marriage proposal but gets cold feet when she begins to consider the implications of two blind parents raising a family.

While their fathers secretly trail them, young Albert Ingalls and Andy Garvey set off to prove their mettle as men by accepting a challenge to live by their wits during a week-long, overland walk from Walnut Grove to Sleepy Eye and back.

Andy is doing poorly in school to the embarrassment of his mother who is the current teacher. Mrs. Garvey hires Nellie Olesen to tutor Andy. Nellie shows Andy how she has been cheating and threatens him to do the same and not tell.

Mr. Standish buys the building that the Blind school has been housed in and wants to turn it into a hotel. He gives the blind school 30 days to move. Adam and Mary send a letter to Charles telling them to alert them if they hear of an available place. Rev. Alden tells Charles that when he died, Lars Hansen left the deed to a big house in his care. It's too big to sell to one family so he hasn't been able to unload it, but it's perfectly big enough for a blind school. The church votes to clean it up and get it ready for the blind school to take it over. The Winoka school is joining with another school run by Mrs. Hester Sue Terhune. When she finds out that a Mrs. Terhune is coming with the Winoka blind school, mistaking her for another lady she once knew by the name of Terhune, Harriet makes the decision to join the blind school on their journey back to Walnut Grove. She also decides to buy herself a new bedroom suit and donates her old (perfectly good one) to Mrs. Terhune's bedroom at the blind school.

Joe Kagen joins Charles and goes to Winoka because they're going to have an extra wagon to bring home. They get to the blind school and see the awful team of horses and the wagon that Mr. Standish tricked Adam into buying even though his contract clearly stated that he would have the best team in the stable. Charles takes the horses into the saloon and convinces Mr. Standish that those aren't his best team and wagon. Then, Charles is surprised in Winoka to find out that Harriet has joined them for the trip home. On the trip, Harriet says she prefers to walk instead of riding on the wagon with Joe. They go about a day and a half before meeting with the train on which Mrs. Terhune's school is meeting them. She is a black lady and has about 6-8 black blind children with her. Harriet is shocked that she is not the lady she thought she was. She acts rather stand-offish around the black children, and one little boy in particular can read her behavior. He talks to Joe Kagen about her behavior and Joe, not knowing that Harriet is listening tells the boy that some people think that just because their skin is a different color they are different. Harriet is offended and later rides with this boy and Joe on the wagon.

Charles has the opportunity to earn $50 by helping run new telephone lines for 30 days. While he's away, Laura and Albert's time is used up with doing extra chores. Caroline is also busy and doesn't have time to deal with Carrie, so she is sent off on her own with some trivial job to do. She goes to pick some strawberries, but when she sees how little they are, she figures it will take her all day to pick enough for a pie. She falls asleep and dreams that a beautiful girl who looks just like her, named Alyssa, takes her to a world where there are strawberries as big as she is along with other fruits. But, then she is awakened because she dreams there is a huge angry bug chasing her on that fruit. She goes home. The next day, she is sent to go fishing and Alyssa takes her to Heaven to see their old dog Jack. The next day she has decided to use her Christmas penny to buy some licorice to share with Pa who should be coming home soon, but she drops the penny in the field, so she dreams that Alyssa makes it big enough for her to sleep on so she can find it easily. She wakes up with it in her hand. Carrie has trouble deciding if Alyssa is just her fairy tale friend or if she is real.

Albert becomes an apprentice for a craftsman who is Jewish. His classmates accuse him of being a Jew-lover and Laura is embarrassed because they accuse her when she tells them to quit picking on Albert. Albert learns to take pride in his work and when Mr. Isaac Singerman dies at the end of the summer, Albert follows his way of planting an acorn to grow a tree to repay the earth for the one he used in his carpentry.

Laura Ingalls is horrified to witness the fall from a tree that blinds her friend, Jordan Harrison, while he's performing a circus stunt. But when she finds out that Jordan's sight has returned, Laura must decide whether it's right when he asks her to keep it a secret, especially after Jordan tells her that his parents' concern for him appears to have brought them back from the brink of divorce.

Charles and Jonathan are picking up a freight delivery for Mr. Olesen when they bump into Toby Noe, an old friend from Winoka. Charles convinces him to come visit them in Walnut Grove. Toby comes to visit. He goes to church with the Ingalls the next day and when he's greeting people at the door, Rev. Alden tells Charles they need to have a meeting to find someone who can play their new organ instead of Harriet. Toby can play, so he agrees to play that very morning. Unfortunately, he's a spirited player and Miss Amanda Cooper fusses at Rev. Alden for that 'un-church-like' music. Toby finds her spirited and it's love at first sight. He tries everything to make her like him. At the same time, Laura is trying with Albert's help to get Jason, a boy at school, to like her. Unfortunately, Laura and Toby both go to the annual barn dance alone, but they both end up with the partner they want.

Adam Kendall is more than a little surprised when wife Mary's letter to his estranged father announcing her pregnancy brings the man to Walnut Grove. But it soon appears that the anticipation of a sighted grandson and not a change of heart towards his blind son may be the reason for the elder Kendall's visit.

Kezia doesn't believe in paying property taxes, and it isn't long before Mrs. Oleson decides to foreclose on the property and purchase it for herself as the family's vacation home. Nels objects to the purchase, knowing she had acquired it unfairly and that Kezia would have no place to go, but Mrs. Oleson responds by moving herself and Nellie and Willie to the lakeside property. Mrs. Oleson, in a show of pity, hires Kezia to be their servant and forces her to live in the shack. Laura, Albert and Andy watch from afar and are disgusted at how cruelly the three Olesons are treating their friend Kezia, and also aware that Mrs. Oleson used underhanded means to buy the property. One night, after hearing Caroline read a story about monsters, Albert comes up with an idea to concoct a monster to drive the Olesons off the property. Working with Kezia, the children set their plans in motion, but Mrs. Oleson, Nellie and Willie are too smart for any tricks and harden their resolve to stay on "their" property. Eventually, Laura, Andy and Albert bring out the heavy artillery: creating a Loch Ness monster out of paper maché. When they hatch their plans, Mrs. Oleson and her children are convinced that the (non-existant) monster poses a real threat to their safety and they beat it. Nels celebrates the success of Laura's plan with Kezia and the others, and it isn't long before Kezia's ownership in her property is restored ... with the promise she will pay her property taxes, no matter what she thinks.

Jonathan loses his cool at Jud Larrabee for not keeping his word about not changing their prices when someone comes along to buy grain from them. Later, Larrabee goes to Jonathan's to "get back" but finds his son, Andy, and attacks him. Andy goes to his father and they go back home and they find their barn on fire. They think Larrabee did it so they go and arrest him. He's brought to trial. Larrabee claims what happened to Andy was an accident and that he didn't burn the barn.

Hoping for a miracle, Charles takes Mary to a specialist in Mankato to find out if the light she has been seeing means that her sight may be returning, while husband Adam worries that she won't need him anymore, and an excited Laura enlists Albert's help to fix up an abandoned cabin to serve as the Kendalls' new home.

While out of town to buy horses, Charles Ingalls boards with Brett Harper, a man who is emotionally withdrawn from his unhappy family and trying to lose himself in work and whiskey, blaming himself for the accidental death of his oldest son in a riding accident four years earlier.

Charles and Jonathan meet with danger as deadly as the disease they left behind them when they are sent for the medical supplies needed to battle an outbreak of anthrax in Walnut Grove.

Talented young painter Dylan Whitaker promised his dying father that he would some day see the ocean he loves to put on canvas; but "some day" comes too soon when Dylan is diagnosed with incurable leukemia and, to keep his promise, he and his concerned friends, Laura and Albert, sneak away from Walnut Grove to hop a railroad freight car bound for the California coast.