When Clara Wellington’s son came home from college and told her he wanted to marry a poor girl from Montana, she was horrified. “But who are her parents?” she asked. “What do they do?”

“What does it matter?” her son Brad asked. “I love Frannie, and that is all that matters to me.” Clara pressed her lips together. Of course, birth and status mattered, they mattered a lot! At least to Clara, they were everything!

When Clara and her husband, Brad Senior, met Frannie Heckle and her parents, all her worst expectations were confirmed. Clara supposed the Heckles were what her father-in-law would have called ‘salt-of-the-earth’ people, but not what she wanted as her son’s in-laws!