A Long Way from Chicago | Plot Summary

A Long Way from Chicago Overview

A Long Way from Chicago is a humorous story about Joey and Mary Alice Dowdel's annual summer visits to their gun-toting Grandma Dowdel's home in a sleepy Illinois town between 1929 and 1935, the years of the Great Depression.

It was always August when we spent a week with our grandma. I was Joey then, not Joe: Joey Dowdel, and my sister was Mary Alice. In our first visits we were still just kids, so we could hardly see her town because of Grandma. She was so big, and the town was so small. She was old too, or so we thought—old as the hills. And tough?

She was tough as an old boot, or so we thought. As the years went by, though, Mary Alice and I grew up, and though Grandma never changed, we'd seem to see a different woman every summer.