The Watsons are poor, the town is small, and Pearl Watson, aged twelve, has opinions about all of it — while the doctor drinks, the rich woman condescends, and a baby called Danny is raised by committee. McClung wrote comic prairie novels and used the fame to win women the vote in Manitoba; she was one of the Famous Five who took the question of whether women were persons to the Privy Council, and won. Fifty-nine plates of houses, cottages, and homesteads by painters including Edvard Munch and Paul Cézanne, from 1820 to 1926, echo the prairie homes Pearl Watson knows.
