First published to international acclaim in 1940, this is a collection of semiautobiographical stories about a boy of Armenian descent called Aram Garoghlanian and is set in Fresno, California. The book is like a novel in that the stories all involve the same character and are placed in a roughly chronological order; the first story takes place when Aram is nine years old, the last when he is a young man leaving his hometown for the first time. From bickering grandparents presiding over a family meeting to the time the circus came to town, each episode vibrates with warmth and humor, building a rich portrait of Aram's large family and of the immigrant experience in general. This utter delight of a book is as easy to read today as it was when it was published almost 70 years ago.