Summary Chapter 1 The book begins as Ellen Creighton and her nine-year-old son, Jethro, plant potatoes for the summer crop. Ellen has had twelve children, four of whom have died. She is a tired woman who favors Jethro most of all. Three of Jethro's siblings died from children's paralysis the ye...

The Era of Reconstruction following the Civil War was a period marked by an intense struggle to restore a worn-out and devastated society. The war, which was aimed at confronting the national problem of slavery, only led to subsequent dilemmas over emancipation and an undefined condition of fr...