After learning that his father's layoff at a steel mill threatens their country home on a fateful Christmas Eve in 1953, a six-year-old boy works frantically to save it in this poignant memoir that depicts a simpler, more innocent, and, in some ways, more free America. Part true novel, part social history, this book is a paean to a lost world, depicting with detail a shy yet curious child's world of freedom and discovery. A rich, sensory, and aesthetic journey through frozen lakes, frosted fields, squawking jays, and the muted palette of gray Illinois winter afternoons, the tale takes readers back to an era of coal stoves, hand pumps, and fragrant markets. Chronicling the family's loss of their bucolic paradise, this work foreshadows a nation's loss of innocence and serves as a microcosm of America's postwar migration from rural life to urban homesteads.