William Kent Krueger paints the struggle of a lifetime. An ordinary boy once again is selected for the main role. This has been a habit of the writer that he takes an ordinary person from the routine world and then brings a hero out of him. History is of the great depression has been one of those chapters in American realities that the nation does not want to recall at all. The economic depression not only made the people starve but it also made the future generation hopeless.
The novel starts when we are told about kids living in Lincoln School because they have been separated from their families because of the economic issues mostly. Odie and Albert have other reasons of being there as they are the two who are orphans. The two orphans with Mose on their side possess a strong group that starts a quest in order to find Emmy the daughter of Cora Frost their class teacher.
The three young children go to Mississippi even for the search and always find Mrs. Brickman on their tail as she has one or two reasons of her own. The terrible things that the four children face change them altogether they start behaving like adults as this seems to be the only way to them for their survival. Scott Brick narrates with the same slow tone of his and matches well with the simple scenes but there are certain issues at the climax.
The children in the also remind us about the books like Ordinary Grace and Iron Lake. The spice of history is also the same. William has kept quite a balance between the novels that he has written over the years. Though the characters possess separate issues that they are dealing with but still the show resemblance.
