Based on the family stories handed down by the author’s grandmother, it tells the story of a year in the life of a family during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When a single mother of 8 children gets evicted from their home, they move into a shack in the woods and make it into a home. Granted, it is a very romanticized view of some harsh realities, but one of the points that the author is making (according to the author’s note in the back of the book), was that though times were hard, the memories her relatives carried forth from these times were overwhelmingly good ones. The illustrations certainly contribute to the nostalgic feel of the book, softening the harsh realities.