It's gonna be really crummy with you gone for the summer! I don't get along with Miss Pratt, and... well, you know." Anthony Monday and his friend Miss Eells were sitting on a wooden bench, which was perched atop a high embankment in Levee Park in the city of Hoosac, Minnesota. It was a mild day in May, in the mid-1950's, and the waters of the Mississippi River were rippled by a stiff flowery-smelling breeze. Anthony was a tall gawky-looking young man of thirteen. He was wearing a red leather cap with a scrunched peak, a red plaid shirt with a buttoned pocket, gray corduroy pants, and white suede shoes. Miss Eells was an odd little woman close to seventy years old, with bright, darting birdlike eyes, gold-rimmed glasses, and a wild mess of white hair. She was the head librarian of the public library in Hoosac, and Anthony worked for her as a page. They had known each other for several years, and they had a strange but wonderful friendship: Anthony told Miss Eells things about himself that he would never have told anyone else, because he trusted and believed in her.
