This is my knock-down favorite "Dear America" book (and believe me, there are good ones and bad ones). I love Kathryn Lasky writing anything, especially her Callista Jacobs mysteries and Prank, and, brought up on my parents' stories about the Depression, this story rings very true.
Minnie Swift, youngest girl and next-to-youngest child in the Swift family, tells the story of "a Christmas of dwindling." Her father, an accountant, is working fewer hours, and the family begins closing off rooms in their house in order to save coal. Then they receive a startling telegram: a young cousin they didn't know existed is coming to live with them: Willie Faye Darling, deep from the Dust Bowl. Willie Faye is the same age as Minnie, but has never seen a movie, doesn't know about comic strips, and is so small people think she is younger.
Yet Willie Faye is the glue that will hold the Swift family together on that "Christmas of dwindling" in which they eat meatless meals, work on home-made Christmas gifts, cope with a tragedy concerning a friend's family, discover some of the sobering things Willie Faye has lived through, and enjoy the antics of Minnie's older and creative sister, "Lady" (short for Adelaide) who loves fashion and Greta Garbo films.
Based on my mom's stories of Depression privations, Minnie's story seems very real. The only false note in the story is the epilog, which I find a bit fanciful.
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