A Long Way From Chicago
Read A Long Way From Chicago Online
Authors: Richard Peck
We heard a little sawing, singing sound as a file began to slice through screen wire. From the settee Mary Alice made some tiny, terrified sound. Grandma reached down for something in her sewing basket. The darkness made me see pinwheels like sparklers. I just managed to notice Grandma’s rocker was rocking and she wasn’t in it. She was standing over me. “Keep just behind me,” she whispered.
I followed her across the room to the kitchen. You wouldn’t believe a woman that heavy could be so light on her feet. She floated, and we moved like some strange beast, big in front, small behind. Now we were by the door to the kitchen, and I heard the scuffle of heavy feet in there on the crinkly linoleum. . . .
“Part vaudeville act, part laconic tall tale, the stories, with their dirty tricks and cunning plots, make you laugh out loud at the farce and snicker at the reversals. Like Grandma, the characters are larger-than-life funny, yet Peck is neither condescending nor picturesque. With the tall talk, irony, insult, and vulgarity, there’s also a heartfelt sense of the Depression’s time and place. . . . Many readers will recognize the irreverent, contrary voices of their own family legends across generations.”
—
Booklist
, starred review
“Each tale is a small masterpiece of storytelling.”
—
The Horn Book
, starred review
The 1999 Newbery Honor Book
N
OVELS FOR
Y
OUNG
A
DULTS
Amanda/Miranda
Are You in the House Alone?
Bel-Air Bambi and the Mall Rats
Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death
Close Enough to Touch
Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt
The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp
Dreamland Lake
Fair Weather
Father Figure
The Ghost Belonged to Me
Ghosts I Have Been
The Great Interactive Dream Machine
Here Lies the Librarian
The Last Safe Place on Earth
A Long Way from Chicago
Lost in Cyberspace
On the Wings of Heroes
Princess Ashley
Remembering the Good Times
Representing Super Doll
The River Between Us
Secrets of the Shopping Mall
Strays Like Us
The Teacher’s Funeral
Those Summer Girls I Never Met
Three Quarters Dead
Through a Brief Darkness
Unfinished Portrait of Jessica
Voices After Midnight
A Year Down Yonder
N
OVELS FOR
A
DULTS
Amanda/Miranda
London Holiday
New York Time
This Family of Women
S
HORT
S
TORIES
Past Perfect, Present Tense
P
ICTURE
B
OOK
Monster Night at Grandma’s House
N
ONFICTION
Anonymously Yours
Invitations to the World
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000
This edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2011
Copyright © Richard Peck, 1998
All rights reserved
Chapter 1
, “Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground,” first appeared in
Twelve Shots: Stories About Guns
edited by Harry Mazer, Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers. Copyright © Richard Peck, 1997.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL EDITION AS FOLLOWS
:
Peck, Richard, date.
A long way from Chicago: a novel in stories / by Richard Peck.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66436-0
[1. Grandmothers—Fiction. 2. Depressions—1929– —Fiction.
3. Country Life—Fiction. 4. Illinois—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P338Li 1998 [Fic]—DC21 98-10953 CIP AC
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
For Judy and David Everson
and to remember James Jones
Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground