Pamela Porter

In 1965 Saskatchewan, twelve-year-old Emaline is left disabled by a farm accident, and her father walks out on the family. When her mother hires Angus, a former mental patient the town fears, to work the farm, Emaline comes to know the gentle man the neighbors refuse to see.

In 1940s Saskatchewan, the Loney children are left to fend for themselves after their father dies and their stepmother leaves town, while their oldest brother goes off to war. Told in many voices, including their dead parents', it follows the siblings through a hard winter with help from a few kind neighbors.