Where the Heart Was — G.G. Boyer

It is the depths of the Depression. In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, "One third of the country was ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed." Young Bennie Todd and his family -- forced to live in an unheated, sparsely furnished apartment in Waubonsee -- are no exception. Bennie, sickly and always hungry, longs for the place where he was born -- the family farm on the Wisconsin Cut-Over. When mysterious Uncle Newt arrives from Alaska and makes the move back possible, Bennie's world enlarges, encompassing the swamps and woodlands of northwestern Wisconsin and the legends surrounding them, the story of his Sioux great-grandmother, and eventually the tender passion of his first and lasting love. In part an autobiography of his Depression childhood, and a multigenerational family saga, Boyer brings to life the mood, the desperation of those years, a re-creates memorable moments in our common history -- truly a book for our time.