Mother & Daughter Bookclub

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www.homesteadblogger.com/BeautyandGrace/

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This is the June book if you want to join in.

www.nancykeane.com/booktalks/enright_thimble.htm

It is called Thimble Summer. I may have read it once, not sure.

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Enright, Elizabeth.
THIMBLE SUMMER
New York : Henry Holt, 1966.
IL 3-6, RL 4.9
ISBN 0805003061
Nine and a half year old Garnet thought this must be the hottest day that had ever been in the world. Every day for weeks she had thought the same thing, but this really was the worst of all. This morning the thermometer outside the village drug store had pointed a thin red finger to one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. If the rain didn't come soon there would be no corn to harvest and they would have to cut the oats for hay. Garnet looked up at the smooth sky angrily, and shook her fist. “You!” she cried, “Why in time can't you let down a little rain!”

Later after Garnet had helped with the dishes, she and Jay put on their bathing suits and went down to the river. “It looks like tea,” said Garnet, up to her neck in brownish lukewarm water. “Feels like it too,” said Jay. “I wish it was colder.” Still it was water and there was enough to swim in. They floated and raced and dove from the old birch tree bent like a bow over the pool. When they were sufficiently waterlogged to be red-eyed and streaming, they went exploring on the sandy flats that had emerged from the river during the weeks of drought. Garnet saw a small object, half-buried in the sand, and glittering. She knelt down and dug it out with her finger. It was a silver thimble. She ran breathlessly to show Jay. “It’s solid silver!” she shouted triumphantly, “and I think it must be magic too!” “Magic!” said Jay. “Don't be silly, there isn't any such thing.” But late that night Garnet woke up with a strange feeling that something was about to happen. Slowly, one by one, as if someone were dropping pennies on the roof came the raindrops, and then the rain burst strong and loud upon the world. Garnet immediately thought of the silver thimble.

Thus begins the “thimble summer” when magical things begin to happen for Garnet and her family. First the rain, then her family gets the money to build the barn they had needed for years, then Eric, the orphan boy appears from out of the woods. One after one, exciting and nice things happen. “As long as I live I'm always going to call this summer the thimble summer,” said Garnet.

A light-hearted, wholesome, and truly delightful story. A timeless classic. Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright. (1939 Newbery Award Winner) (Marsha Carlan, [e-mail], Benton Elementary School)
SUBJECTS: Farm life -- Fiction.
Wisconsin -- Fiction.

From the above link.

I imagine it to be from the time of the Waltons.