Hans and Gretel Brinker are the two main characters. They attend the same school as middle-class children, but they do not lead easy lives. Throughout the story, many schoolmates refer to them as "rag pickers" or "peasants."

Moreover, their daily lives involve unremitting poverty, with only their own efforts and occasional charity providing relief. An injury that their father, Raff Brinker, sustained while defending the dikes against a rising sea a decade earlier has rendered him a mindless invalid.

No pension or workman's compensation eases his family's plight. To make matters worse, a small fortune Raff had saved disappeared at the time of injury.

His wife has struggled ever since to support her husband and their two children.

The poverty-stricken Brinker family is not Dodge's only concern. She devotes much of the novel to the adventures of the middle-class children who attend school with...