Paul Fleischman’s wonderful young adult novella takes place in Cleveland, Ohio. I couldn’t remember if an actual date is ever given in the novella, so I did a little research and still couldn’t find a date for the setting. The book is published in 1997, so that gives us a clue that it is, perhaps, set in recent times. If I had to make an educated guess, I would put the setting in the 1980’s when the inner cities of most of the major cities in the United States were in drastic states of decay. The building of housing projects started by the Department of Housing of Urban Development (HUD) in 1965 had run its course in its ability to keep up with the demand of housing for the poor in the inner city. The housing projects quickly started to deteriorate, as there was little money for upkeep and few jobs for those in the inner city to obtain. Crime and drug abuse became rampant in the projects, and people had very little hope or money to get up and out of their impoverished situations.
Although the novel is set in Cleveland, it represents many urban areas around the country. The novel takes place in an urban area on Gibb St. where a vacant lot exists filled with trash. The lot on Gibb St. separates different ethnic groups of the area. Blacks, Latinos, and Asian immigrants, as well as long time elderly residents of the area, live in close proximity to each other but are segregated by cultural and ethnic differences. It is the planting of a few lima beans in a garden by Kim, a young Vietnamese girl, that brings the community together to help make their lives and environment better.
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