It's 1930 . . . and Ruby Quinlan lives in a big house in Adelaide with her parents and her fox terrier, Baxter. As she gets ready for her twelfth birthday party, Ruby has never been happier. But the world she knows is collapsing, and people everywhere are losing their jobs and their homes. Soon Ruby's comfortable life falls apart in ways she could never have imagined . . . Meet Ruby and join her adventure in the first of four stories about a happy-go-lucky girl in a time of great change.