<DIV>The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in <I>Little Britches</I> and <I>Man of the Family</I>, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes into his own. The family's run-ins with authority and with broken furnaces in winter are evocative of a full and warm family life.<p><I>Mary Emma & Company</I> continues the Moody saga that started in Colorado with <I>Little Britches</I> and runs through <I>Man of the Family</I> and <I>The Home Ranch</I>. All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books, as has <I>The Fields of Home</I>, in which Ralph leaves the Massachusetts town for his grandfather's farm in Maine.</P></DIV>