SuitabookFamily understanding across time
Joey and Mary Alice visit Grandma over seven summers and gradually move from wariness towards understanding and affection.
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Book details
Richard Peck - Author
R. Peck - Author
This is a comic family story about children learning to see beyond their grandmother’s intimidating manner. Its linked episodes mix practical hardship, rule-breaking schemes and generosity, with the relationship developing across successive summers.
What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice -- two city slickers from Chicago -- make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town? August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn't resting easy. August 1930: The Cowgill boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back with a dead mouse and a bottle of milk. August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma to trespass, pinch property, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry -- all in one day. And there's more -- much more -- as Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma's, each one funnier and more surprising than the year before. In the grand storytelling tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannery O'Connor, Richard Peck has created a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining. And year round, you are sure to enjoy your stay with them. - Back cover.
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Sign in for personalised guidanceThis is a comic family story about children learning to see beyond their grandmother’s intimidating manner. Its linked episodes mix practical hardship, rule-breaking schemes and generosity, with the relationship developing across successive summers.
Joey and Mary Alice visit Grandma over seven summers and gradually move from wariness towards understanding and affection.
The story is set during the Great Depression and includes hunger, poverty-era references, a corpse and family conflict within comic episodes.
Some episodes involve a corpse and a grisly sight, homemade explosives and property damage, trespassing, poaching, theft-like behaviour and a teenager seeking refuge from a cruel, controlling mother.
This is a grounded book brief while Suitabook strengthens the analysis: some draft conclusions still depend on unresolved evidence.
Book information
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"A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck, 1931–1933 - Vocabulary List | Vocabulary.com
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Checked: 19 September 2026.
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