The love of family. The heartbreak of war. The triumph of coming home.

1940. Rural Wisconsin. Sixteen-year-old Earl "Earwig" Gunderman is not like other boys his age. Fiercely protected by his older brother, Earwig sees his town and the world around him through the prism of his own unique understanding. He sees his mother's sadness and his father's growing solitude. He sees his brother, Jimmy, falling in love with the most beautiful girl in town. And while Earwig is unable to make change for customers at his family's store, he is singularly well suited to understand what other people in...

Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn Button Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other.
Much to her mother s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother s ashes and a tome she calls The Book of Bright Ideas. It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those...