Book excerpt: "The year was 1931 - well into the Great Depression and on the brink of the worst days of the Dust Bowl. Tascosa, once a booming Wild West town, complete with outlaws, cowboys, and gamblers, was all but deserted. Its only resident was Frenchie McCormick, a famous dance-hall girl from Tascosa's glory days. In 1931 she was a frail and lonely woman in her eighties, living in a tumble-down adobe shack and waiting for Tascosa to rise again." "This story is about Tascosa, Frenchie, the Christmas pageant of 1931, and twelve children stranded in a one-room school house by an untimely blizzard."--BOOK JACKET.