The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in Little Britches and Man of the Family, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes into his own. The family’s run-ins with authority and with broken furnaces in winter are evocative of a full and warm family life.

Mary Emma & Company continues the Moody saga that started in Colorado with Little Britches and runs through Man of the Family and The Home Ranch. All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books, as has The Fields of Home, in which Ralph leaves the Massachusetts town for his grandfather's farm in Maine.

Ralph Moody (1898–1982) is the author of Come on Seabicuit! as well as the Little Britches series about a boy's life on a Colorado ranch, all available in Bison Books editions.

"Moody has recorded with fidelity and skill a time and a place and a way of life that is, in itself, the essence of the American dream. Reading his book is like returning to Grandmother's kitchen with the heavenly smell of sugar cookies escaping from the oven."—Chicago Sunday Tribune

"In Ralph Moody’s . . . book of young memories grinding poverty is overshadowed by the diligence that overcame it. Bitter cold is forgot-ten in heartwarming affection and humor. Unpretentious courage lights every page."—Christian Science Monitor

"It is a story of family industry and ingenuity. . . . A well-told story, full of interesting detail about life in the first part of the twentieth century, and children, particularly, will find it pleasant reading."—New York Herald Tribune Books