The Great Depression was cruel to small Iowa towns, and doubly cruel to an Osage widow with four small children. Her youngest child guides us in and around the town, noting with side-glances in windows and open doors the important events in the lives of the town's people, and the challenges he faces in a poverty-stricken home. With pitch-perfect ears for Midwestern dialog, his stories are wry, funny, sad and poignant- but never nostalgic or sentimental. If a small town could write a memoir, this would be it