I'm trying to remember the name of a teleplay involving homesteaders.

[NNadir]

This is a long shot, but if anyone can help me, I'd love to know it.

Here's the plot: A homesteader trying to make it in the Dakotas or a similar region hires a woman with a young daughter to be his housekeeper. He's of European origins.

At first their relationship is formal and cool and he seems hard on his new worker and her daughter. But after a while, without much display of affection, he proposes marriage. She accepts and they have another child, but the child dies of fever.

Meanwhile a harsh winter strikes and he loses most of his lifestock. He wants to give up but his new wife tells him she wants him to keep fighting for the farm because she has a child buried in that land.

The end.

It was a wonderful piece and it stays in my mind, but I can't remember the name, the author, or where I saw it.

Strike a bell with anyone?

[haele]

1. Sarah, Plain and Tall?

That was the movie based off a book that sounds like that. It's a children's book by Patricia McLachlin.

Haele

[NNadir]

2. Sarah, Plain and Tall may have been it.

Thank you very much. I knew someone here might know about it.

It looks like the plot of the book is different than the movie, but the synopsis of one television movie sounds very much like the teleplay I saw. It was a wonderful piece about the sufferings of ordinary life on the plains.

It was wonderful, and I didn't think of it as something that solely had value for children.

Thanks again.