In a small prairie town like Argue, Saskatchewan, everyone knows
everybody else s business. Everyone knows that the Loney family has been
barely hanging on the father, George, reduced to drink and despair since
the loss of his farm and the death of his wife, Margaret. And that the
four Loney children do not get along with George s second wife, the
pious, bitter Effie. When George dies in a drunken stupor and Effie
takes off with a traveling Bible salesman, it looks as though the
children are done for. Who s to save them when everyone in town is
coping with the lingering Depression and the loss of their young men to
the war? But by drawing good people to them and by rising to the
occasion themselves, sixteen-year-old Ran, fourteen-year-old Nora,
twelve-year-old Jim and little Addie find a way to make ends meet under
the watchful eye of their ghostly parents."