His sources included Henry Howe's "Historical Collections of Ohio" and "Pioneer Pennsylvania," a compilation of archaic Pennsylvanian slang by Henry W. Shoemaker. Richter also interviewed scholars and former neighbors of pioneer heritage whom he had known in his home state of Pennsylvania and in the Ohio Valley. Richter wrote that this early form of spoken language no longer survived in the Ohio Valley. He learned that it was found in some areas of the South and Southwestern areas of the country. He noted that, although it is often mistaken for a "native" form of speech there, it should be considered “a living reminder of the great mother tongue of early America.” Sayward values family above all else. She expresses a strong loyalty to the ties of kinship, even if this loyalty is not always returned. Several members of her birth family, including her father, Worth, her brother Wyitt, and her sister Ascha eventually abandon or otherwise leave the family home, with no attempt to maintain communication. Her younger sister, Sulie, is lost to the forest, and eventually is assimilated into the Lenape Indian tribe. But Sayward always remembers these absent family members and holds them in her thoughts. When she has problems in her marriage or with her own children, whether because of her husband's infidelity or because of generational differences, Sayward tries to defuse tensions and ultimately forgives any wrongs committed. The characters in "The Awakening Land" deal with the human condition in a setting of great natural challenges as they carve out lives on the frontier. Disease, warfare, natural disasters, severe weather, and accidents, as well as dangerous animals, all contributed to a high mortality rate amongst the pioneers. They worked to cut down trees and clear the land, to cultivate crops, to care for livestock, and to raise and process all their food. They also had to deal with hostilities from native Indians resisting white American encroachment. At times the pioneers and settlers faced famine and such natural disasters as floods. The central character, Sayward Luckett Wheeler, witnesses the transformation of the frontier settlement founded by her father into a town with a church, a school, frame and brick houses, businesses, and such other improvements as roads, bridges, canals, a railroad, and a county courthouse  – all within her lifespan of some eighty-odd years. Although Sayward at first welcomes these developments as a promise of prosperity and improved lives, by the end of the trilogy, she questions whether the rapid changes have instead fostered greed and laziness in the townspeople.