The gifts she bestows are not the kind you can wrap and put under a Christmas tree, but they are the kind no receiver would seek to return. She’s just a gruff as ever, but older now. The dad, of course, needs a congregation, and the mom needs help keeping them all functioning well.įans of A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder will be happy to read more about Grandmas Dowdel’s schemes to influence her small town and the family next door for the better. Six-year-old Ruth Ann is starting first grade, and she’s searching for someone to look up to.

Her obsession with everything Elvis leads her to take up with an unsavory character and start lying to her parents about where she’s going and what she’s doing. Phyllis, fourteen going on twenty, is appalled at having to start high school in a place where she knows no one. He’s the easy target of bullies and in need of confidence as well as friends. Bob, who tells the story, is the middle child on the verge of puberty. Dowdel next door seems to know exactly what each needs. The family, which includes three children, has been relocated from Terre Haute, Indiana to take over what is to be a new Methodist church but what is now a run-down building with no windows, a deteriorating roof and no congregation in a small Illinois town.Īs family members work to adjust to a new life, gruff old Mrs. Dowdel to the Methodist preacher’s family that just moved in next door. Grandma Dowdel’s back, only this time she’s known as Mrs.

A season of gifts by richard peck