Elisabeth, the Willow

Elisabeth is a German peasant from Russia who comes to the U.S. as a teenager in 1855.  She is an ordinary girl who sometimes makes poor choices, but in 1871 she is living happily with her family in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, at the time when the worst recorded forest fire In North America, covering about 1-1/2 million acres and causing the deaths of an estimated 1500 people, destroys every building in Peshtigo but one and nearly half of the population.  Elisabeth survives and goes on with her life as best she can, eventually homesteading with her husband on a farm near Dorchester, Wisconsin.