In 1932 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression, Both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

On a visit to Cincinnati from rural Kentucky during the Great Depression, Aunt Millie impresses Kit with her money-saving cleverness. Includes information on life in America during the Great Depression.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.