A short novel written by L. Frank Baum under his one time pseudonym of John Estes Cooke. He probably used this name which was similar to the name of an actual author John Esten Cooke to make it plain that this item was written under an assumed name. In the introduction Baum states that this book was written in the spirit of the broadest goodfellowship and with malice toward none. He also mentions that the characters in the book are a combination of characters met in his travels and that no reader should try to pin one of these masquerade costumes to any of his neighbors, lest your neighbor try to fit one of them to you. It is well known that Baum was suspected as being the author as soon as the book was released and the neighbors of Macatawa Michagan ignored his warning and tried to fit the various parts in the book to other neighbors. The book is about a romance of two young people and the events surrounding it. It also is the tale of some legal issues over the ownership of the park community of Macatawa and some abuses of the rights of the cottagers by the current owners of the park. It tells how these issues were resolved and how the place became a better place to live during the summer vacations. The book is fairly light reading and the main interest in the book is that it is somewhat biographical in regards to L. Frank Baum's life. This is true to some degree of all of Baum's pseudonymous novels. While not strict biography, Baum wove some happening of his life into the stories. ( )