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I read it in elementary school so my memory is sketchy, but I bet someone else here has read it. Because I checked it out from the school library it's probably a children's or young teen book.
The plot:
A kid's family loses their family farm (presumably in the midwest), due to defaulting on a mortgage. The narrator (whether it is narrated first-person or not I can't remember) describes the kid coming with his dad to the bank to cash checks etc. and the amount cashed would decrease over the months.
So they have to move into the city. I forget what happens for a while, but somehow they end up in a run-down project with an absentee slumlord. The place burns down and he loses his mother and/or his sister in the fire. I remember there being a detailed part about the fire, and him running around screaming for his mom.
For a while him and his father are homeless. But then either him or his father gets a job on a construction site, and IIRC the book ends with the father and son, newly enriched by the construction job's first paycheck, enjoying a lavish meal at McDonald's.
Hopefully that is enough detail for someone here to recognize the book. It was one of the few stories I read as a kid that I really liked, and the name has been bugging me for a while now.
The plot:
A kid's family loses their family farm (presumably in the midwest), due to defaulting on a mortgage. The narrator (whether it is narrated first-person or not I can't remember) describes the kid coming with his dad to the bank to cash checks etc. and the amount cashed would decrease over the months.
So they have to move into the city. I forget what happens for a while, but somehow they end up in a run-down project with an absentee slumlord. The place burns down and he loses his mother and/or his sister in the fire. I remember there being a detailed part about the fire, and him running around screaming for his mom.
For a while him and his father are homeless. But then either him or his father gets a job on a construction site, and IIRC the book ends with the father and son, newly enriched by the construction job's first paycheck, enjoying a lavish meal at McDonald's.
Hopefully that is enough detail for someone here to recognize the book. It was one of the few stories I read as a kid that I really liked, and the name has been bugging me for a while now.
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