Mary Emma & Company (Bison Book)

Mary Emma & Company (Bison Book)
by Ralph Moody

Mary Emma & Company (Bison Book)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ralph Moody
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1994-02-01
ISBN: 0803282117
Number of pages: 235
Publisher: Bison Books

Book Reviews of Mary Emma & Company (Bison Book)

Book Review: The Moodys soldier on
Summary: 4 Stars

This, the fourth volume in Ralph Moody's reminiscences, picks up immediately after the close of "Man of the Family." It's January, 1912, and widowed Mary Emma Moody, unwilling to give testimony that may send an innocent man to the gallows, has fled Colorado with her six children, of whom the eldest are Gracie, almost 15, and Ralph, 13, to the suburbs of Boston, where her brother Frank and his family live. Crammed into Frank's two-bedroom apartment, her first priority is to find quarters they can afford to rent, followed by work at which to earn a living--taking in laundry, since she's already used to that. Obstacles soon arise: rents are far higher in Massachusetts than in Colorado, and Mary Emma has to learn a whole new style of ironing when it becomes obvious that she'll have to do fine washing for families rather than hotel curtains. But Ralph soon finds part-time work in a neighborhood store, which leads the family, before long, to the rental of half an old Victorian house and a windfall of a houseful of furniture to go in it for only $50. Then there's a neglected furnace and leaky water pipes to struggle with, and pickups and deliveries to make in the midst of a blizzard, and the question of affordable coal. But with help from Uncle Frank and Great-Uncle Levi (a delightful and vividly-described character), along with Ralph's employers and his new friends among the neighborhood boys, their first five months in their new home end on an upbeat note as they celebrate May Day with an avalanche of baskets for Gracie--and one for Mary Emma from her "best lover," second son Philip.

Moody's trademark humor and vivid description is the hallmark of this book, especially when he tells of Frank and Levi's pitch-in to renovate the cellar laundry room and the bridge fire which ends by gifting the Moodys with a huge load of saleable kindling wood. His ongoing enmity with his school principal, who seems to have prejudged him a "bad boy," and his seesaw relationship with Cop Watson, who alternately warns him to take care and assists him and his friends with their wood-salvage operation, are other high points, as is the night sledding expedition to the old clay-pit where Gracie--often depicted as bossy and high-toned--forgets for a while that she's growing up and originates a daring "circle route." It's a bit disappointing that he gives little attention to what must have been a wrenching change in his life (after four years in the West he has come to think of himself as a kind of apprentice cowboy), but on balance, the story is a fascinating and inspiring one.

Summary of Mary Emma & Company (Bison Book)

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.

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