Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

The story is about Carol Bird, a Christmas-born child, who as a young girl is unusually loving and generous, having a positive effect on everyone with whom she comes into contact. She is the youngest member of her family and has devoted older brothers. At about the age of 5, Carol contracts an unspecified illness (possibly tuberculosis), and, by the time she is 10, she is bedridden; physicians say that she does not have long to live. The novel primarily...

Talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, with whom she spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up.