It is the depths of the Depression. In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, "One third of the country was ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed." Young Bennie Todd and his family -- forced to live in an unheated, sparsely furnished apartment in Waubonsee -- are no exception. Bennie, sickly and always hungry, longs for the place where he was born -- the family farm on the Wisconsin Cut-Over. When mysterious Uncle Newt arrives from Alaska and makes the move back possible, Bennie's world enlarges, encompassing the swamps and woodlands of north-western Wisconsin and the legends surrounding them, the story of his Sioux great-grandmother, and eventually the tender passion of his first and lasting love. In part an autobiography of his Depression childhood, and a multigenerational family saga, Boyer brings to life the mood, the desperation of those years, a re-creates memorable moments in our common history -- truly a book for our time.