In a small prairie town like Argue, Saskatchewan, everyone knows everybody else's business. Everyone knows that the Loney family has been barely hanging on the father, George, reduced to drink and despair since the loss of his farm and the death of his wife, Margaret. And that the four Loney children do not get along with George's second wife, the pious, bitter Effie. When George dies in a drunken stupor and Effie takes off with a traveling Bible salesman, it looks as though the children are done for. Who's to save them when everyone in town is coping with the lingering Depression and the loss of their young men to the war? But by drawing good people to them and by rising to the occasion themselves, sixteen-year-old Ran, fourteen-year-old Nora, twelve-year-old Jim and little Addie find a way to make ends meet under the watchful eye of their ghostly parents.