The Wishing Apple Tree

In rural Nebraska, crippled Nora Cameron visits the Dodge family for the summer. She remains unfriendly partly because of her affliction and partly because of the shambles of a village church that could have been a pipeline as a source of spiritual strength. Nora's feelings leave their effect on young Laura Dodge. A kind of human catalyst, she stirs up her schoolmates, and with the help of old Capt. Tweed, a Scotch seaman who happens upon them and later turns out to be a friend of the Camerons, they repair the church by themselves in this story, told with humor and pathos.