This is a collection of personal essays about a typical Midwestern family in the mid-twentieth century. The family of four daughters and a mother and father enjoyed life in a big house, but life was not without its drama, sorrow, or angst. The essays include: the Barnum and Bailey Sisters, Birth and Death, The Brook, Mother's Bread, Blackberry Picking and Other Leisure Arts, A Drunken Pyromaniac, Let's Go To the Movies, Apple Blossom Time, Pickle Vats and Bigamists, Hair, and concludes with Bright-eyed Small Town Girl. For readers of Hennekens' many books, this provides a look into how she grew up. Each essays weaves together many facets of her childhood into an interesting tale.