Summary
In a rust-belt town where the smokestack coughs like an asthmatic prophet, Dolly McKenzie—freckled, gap-toothed, seven—watches her mother fold gauzy scarves into a carpet-bag and vanish toward city lights that promise turpentine salons and absinthe kisses. Left behind is a father whose factory is a tinderbox of grievances: wages frozen since the Harding administration, safety latches held together with chewing gum and prayer. To keep his only child from the strike’s shrapnel, John McKenzie dispatches Dolly, her wheezy pal Ebenezer Eczema Abraham White (yes, the eczema is part of the personality), and Eb’s weary mother to Peaceful Acres, the brother’s pastoral conceit—rolling hills, Guernsey cows, and a porch swing that squeaks like guilt itself. The farm, christened with Orwellian optimism, becomes a playground of anarchy: piglets dyed patriotic colors, a Model T disassembled and reassembled inside a hayloft, a Sunday sermon upstaged by a frog in the collection plate. The children’s final prank—a lantern floated on a moonlit raft—ends in catastrophe: they chase it into the forest, lose the path, and tumble into a ravine where even the owls sound accusatory. Search parties form: farmers with kerosene lamps, strikers in dented fedoras, a sheriff who smells of bootleg apples. Yet the rescue arrives via the very woman who abandoned the narrative: Dolly’s mother, barefoot in silk stockings, guided by some maternal sonar stronger than art or adultery. She carries both children across a clearing just as dawn ignites the sky like a struck match. Mother and daughter return to a kitchen table still littered with unpaid bills; the factory whistle will blow again, but the picket lines dissolve into handshakes and a promise of better coffee breaks.
Synopsis
Dolly McKenzie's mother fancies herself a gifted painter and goes to the city to live a Bohemian life style. Meanwhile, Dolly's father John, facing an imminent strike in the factory he runs, sends the child, together with her little friend, Ebenezer Eczema Abraham White, and his mother, to his brother Howard's farm. The children soon bring chaos to "Peaceful Acres" with their pranks, but on one of their escapades, they become lost in the woods. Even the striking employees join in the search party, but it is Dolly's mother, coincidentally in the country for a weekend party, who finally finds the frightened children. The negligent mother willingly returns to her family, and John, grateful to his men for their help, promises to settle the labor dispute the next morning.
