Alice Hegan Rice

In the shanty town called the Cabbage Patch, Mrs. Wiggs scrabbles for survival with her brood of children and hopes for the return of her husband, who left many years before.

Optimistic in the face of failure, Daniel Webster Opp finally attains success as a traveling salesman for a shoe firm, but just when his prospects are best, he receives word that his stepfather is dead. He leaves at once to meet his brother Ben at Cove Junction, where they settle the estate according to Ben's demands. Ben takes the money, while Mr. Opp is given the homestead and custody of Kippy, his feebleminded half-sister. Sacrificing all to remain with his sister, Mr. Opp founds a newspaper, the Opp Eagle, and begins to promote the town.

The Wiggs family plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in their rundown shack with leftover stew, without Mr. Wiggs who wandered off long ago an has never been heard from. Do-gooder Miss Lucy brings them a real feast. Her boyfriend Bob arranges to take Wiggs' sick boy to a hospital. Their other boy makes some money peddling kindling and takes the family to a show. Mrs. Wiggs is called to the hopsital just in time to see her boy die. Her neighbor Miss Mazy wants to marry Mr. Stubbins who insists on tasting her cooking. Mrs. Wiggs sneaks her dishes past Stubbins who agrees to marriage. Mr. Wiggs appears suddenly, in tatters, with just the amount of money (twenty dollars) needed to save the family from foreclosure. Miss Lucy and Bob get married.

Mrs. Wiggs, a loving mother whose husband has abandoned her, supports her many children and lives in hope of her husband's return.

A Scots-Irish lad comes to America hoping to find his fortune. On the sea voyage he meets and falls for a lovely young girl, but they are parted on arrival. Years later, in the Kentucky town where he has settled and prospered, he meets the girl again, and both sparks and complications arise.

Mrs. Wiggs, a loving mother whose husband has abandoned her, supports her many children and lives in hope of her husband's return.

Nance Molloy's cheerful disposition, in sharp contrast to the slum near the cathedral where she and her parents make their home, earns her the nickname "Sunshine Nan." However, her fights with the cathedral choirboys, led by MacPherson Clark, gets her into trouble. For interfering in a family squabble, she and her pal, Dan Lewis, are sent to reform school for five years, and upon her release, she becomes a stenographer in the elder Clark's shoe factory. Dan meanwhile has taken a job in the factory's chemical department, where he invents a dye process that promises to make him rich.