This short novel covers a span of five years, from 1924 to 1929, in the lives of the four motherless Hughes children, Evelyn, Floyd, Dale, and Vernon, who range in age from three to twelve years. They are left at the Wyoming State Orphanage in Cheyenne by their alcoholic father, Thomas. When he does not return for them, as he has promised to do, or pay forty dollars a month for their support, they become wards of the State Commission of Child and Animal Protection. The children have lived in poverty in a small broken-down house next to a railroad coaling station in Worland, Wyoming....