Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying.

On a hazy September morning in 1937, at Chicago’s Dearborn Station, 15-year-old Mary Alice Dowdel waits to board a train to her grandmother’s house in southern Illinois. Although the nation’s economy, hit hard by the Great Depression, has been on the mend, a recent downturn and the loss of her father’s job have forced her parents to take a tiny apartment, leaving no room for Mary Alice. 

She will be making the trip all alone: Her 17-year-old brother, Joey, is out West, planting trees for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Mary Alice, used to life in the city, faces the prospect of a whole year without movie theaters, telephones, in-house bathrooms, and other “modern” amenities. She will also have to attend a rural school with a bunch of strangers. She also feels uneasy about having the unpredictable Grandma Dowdel as her sole companion, a sentiment echoed by her mother, who mutters, “Better you than me,” as the train pulls up (3).

Disembarking at Grandma’s town with her trunk, a portable radio, and her pet cat, Bootsie, Mary Alice receives a welcome from her grandmother, who seems even taller than she remembers from two years ago but no warmer: “[T]here wasn’t a hug in her” (5).