The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in "Little Britches" and "Man of the Family, " Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches, " comes into his own. The family's run-ins with authority and with broken furnaces in winter are evocative of a full and warm family life.
"Mary Emma & Company" continues the Moody saga that started in Colorado with "Little Britches" and runs through "Man of the Family" and "The Home Ranch, " All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books, as has "The Fields of Home, " in which Ralph leaves the Massachusetts town for his grandfather's farm in Maine.