Nana visits her grandson, who sets out to share with her all the lovely things the country has to offer.

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

In this sequel to Kenneth Grahame's classic "The Wind in the Willows," the escapades continue for four animal friends who live along a river in the English countryside--Toad, Mole, Rat, and Badger.