Summary

Percy Darling has donated the barn on his Matlock, Massachusetts, property to the Elves and Fairies preschool which has been refurbished. The donation was made in exchange for a job for his divorced and unsettled daughter, Clover, whose two children live with their father in New York City. Percy is especially fond of his grandson, Robert, a student at Harvard. Robert is the son of Percy's other daughter, Trudy, an oncologist who works in Boston. Robert visits Percy frequently and helps him adapt to new technology so that Percy can send email and browse on his laptop.

Clover browses the newspaper and tells Percy about some vandalism in which a local car was filled with corn husks and a big sign glued to the windshield hawking the use of ethanol. Clover asks Percy if the preschool can build a tree house in a...