Indiana in the days of lamplight, gingham tablecloths, slat bonnets and copper-toed shoes comes alive in this nostalgic novel by one of America's best-loved story tellers—Sterling North. The story begins when Jeremiah Tarleton, a lonesome ten-year-old orphan is living with his proud, religious Granny Kinkaid. An artist with her loom, Granny is seeking to tell the complicated and passionate story of Jeremiah's heritage and of her own bitterness against the Tarleton family by weaving a multicolored counterpane of "story covers." Two themes run through Jeremiah's life during the spring of the story. One is the slowly unfolding tale taking shape under Granny's work-gnarled hands, and the other is the boy's fiercely protective affection for a black lamb—a forbidden possession. So Dear To My Heart is a story of emotional depth and beauty filled with the gaiety, songs, dances, and color of Indiana in the early days of the century. Saturday Review wrote: "The story rings with music everywhere; it is itself a kind of prose ballad of backwoods Indiana, merry with a gnarly humor, rapturous with devotion to the teachings of the Good Book."