What is the beginning of A Long Way to Chicago about?

In the Prologue, Joey Dowdel, now called Joe, begins to reminisce about the summers he and his sister, Mary Alice went to visit their Grandma. They always went in August to spend their week. Joey is now an old man, older even than his Grandma was. He remembers her as being larger than life. She never changed, but as he and his sister grew up, they saw her as a different woman every summer.

In Chapter One, Joey is nine and Mary Alice is seven. They leave Chicago and travel by train to visit their Grandma Dowdel who lives somewhere between Chicago and St. Louis. She lives in the last house in a small town. It seems like a slow place and Mary Alice doesn’t like it, mainly because Grandma has an outhouse and an old tomcat that scares her. They soon learn just how interesting the town can be after Shotgun Cheatham died.