Garnet's friends are a lively assortment of country personalities and many of her adventures stem from the natural happenings of a farm summer; barnraising and threshing and harvest.

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

"Miss Hickory is a doll who survives a hard winter alone in her corncob house when Great-granny Brown moves to Boston. Very good portrayal of old New England customs."