The framework for Just for Joy is the Great Depression of the Thirties and World War II. One ended the other. How a small town in the Midwest coped with each of these catastrophes, Patricia Linder guides her readers through the undercurrents of a family's daily life meeting the challenges and conquering the fears of poverty or the desolation that accompanies the impersonal demands of war. This is a biography about an Iowa town and the family that cherished it, making it more than just the place they lived. As seen through the eyes of a child growing up, the reader becomes a member of that family, its loyalties to each other, its laughter and deep sadness. There is an innocence about those desperate years. A parent's anguish goes unnoticed with the promised delights of childhood. Shielded from the realities of the hardness of the times, a generation grew up in the shadow of want and the finality of the atomic bomb. Award-winning writer Patricia Linder, has given us Row, Row, Row Your Boat and The Lady and the Tiger which has received the 2006 Silver Medal for Memoirs from the Military Writers of America.