Originally a Junior Literary Guild selection, Bank Street College choice for Best Books for Children, and winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Juvenile BookIn 1888 Kansas City, Missouri, twelve-year-old Jocey Royal, who has a cleft lip, no longer goes to school. Jocey believes that she will never have a friend, that others will always chase and make fun of her, as they did at school before she quit.Since her mother died and her father became a drifter, Jocey has lived with her grandmother, a washerwoman. When she's not helping Gram with laundry, she fills her lonely life with books and dreams. Mostly she dreams of Kansas and the farm her father abandoned there. On the farm, she could live in isolation--free from torment. Eventually she persuades Gram to go with her to Kansas.Life on the farm is not, however, what Jocey expected. Hard work was no surprise. But there are neighbors and traveling salesmen who cannot be avoided. Then there's Gram, who seems determined to be sickly. Jocey wonders if she made a terrible mistake, until she discovers that any girl can have friends, if she will open herself to others. And maybe even her cleft lip can be helped.

Jocelyn Pladson buys the livery stable in Skiddy to aid the widow of the previous owner. Citified newcomers with shady pasts and newly invented motorcars, Maretta Rudd and J. L. Cochran intend to replace the livery with a motorcar business. Fools, who ignore too soon the need for horses and mules in transportation and farm work. Maretta preaches the livery is smelly, antiquated. J.L. aims for a seat on town council to bolster their plan. While Jocelyn persuades others to not vote for him, he arranges a 4th of July celebration to win votes. A mad dog running through the frightened crowd ends the festivities early. A horse race J.L. bet a fortune on is canceled. Rom, the teenage boy Jocelyn took in and raised, offers a race between his mule and J.L.'s Oldsmobile. The winner? J.L., furious, hires hoodlums to demolish Jocelyn's livery, expecting blame to land on them alone. No dice. Prison for J.L. looms, and Maretta leaves town. Jocelyn plans to keep the Skiddy property, the land, for a promising future.