Georgie encounters the Goose Prince in Concord, Massachusetts, and nearby Walden Pond during the latter part of the twentieth century. For the most part Langton's Concord is an ordinary New England small town, a suburb of Boston where people have created a community and where everyone knows each other.

When Mr. Preek "rescues" Georgie from the Goose Prince, he recognizes her as "Fred Hall's little stepdaughter"; when he buys a shotgun, he is disappointed that the man working in the hardware store does not recognize his name.

Georgie does not fit into the rigid routines of this orderly community. She is too young, too independent, too imaginative, and too much the natural child. Uncle Freddy says "she is too young to know the limits of human possibility. For Georgie, anything is possible!" Although he is the founder and president of the Concord College of Transcendental Knowledge, Uncle Freddy...