As Far As I Can See: Meg's Diary is the first book featuring Meg Wells in the My America series and the seventh overall. It was first published in January 2001 and reprinted with a new cover design in August 2002. The book was written by Kate McMullan. It was followed by Meg's second diary For This Land.
"May 28, 1856 I waved until I could no longer see Father. I watched the rooftops and the steeples and the smoke stacks until they disappeared. Then, all I could see was a dark cloud of smoke hanging over what I knew to be St. Louis. Good-bye, Father! Get well, Mother and Elizabeth! Get well! ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ When her mother and sister fall ill, Meg and her brother Preston are sent to live with relatives on the prairie to avoid the cholera epidemic in St. Louis. After an adventurous journey, Meg and Preston arrive in Kansas where they learn a lot about themselves as they adjust to the rugged lifestyle."
"St. Louis, 1856 Meg's story begins... In Book One of her diary, Meg must leave her beloved family behind and move in with relatives on the Kansas prairie, to escape a cholera epidemic in St. Louis. Meg's spirit and will help her adjust to the rugged country lifestyle, even as she hopes every day to be reunited with her family."
"The author would like to thank her editors, Beth Levine and Amy Griffin, for their wise guidance with this project. She would also like to thank Jenny Vaughn, Marky Shapleigh, Susan Craig, and Jane Courter; The Campbell House Museum in St. Louis, Missouri; and Deborah M. White of the Lawrence Visitor Center. She is especially grateful to Judith M. Sweets of the Watkins Community Museum of History in Lawrence, Kansas, for her critical reading of the manuscript. She would like to acknowledge her debt to two diarists who traveled to Kansas in the 1850s: Mrs. Miriam Davis Colt and the Reverend Richard Cordley."
Notes[]
The portrait on the cover of the As Far As I Can See was illustrated by Glenn Harrington.