The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread (Don Robertson)

A gentle, nostalgic story set in 1944. A 9-year-old boy decides to make a trek across Cleaveland to bolster his courage and self-respect. He winds up dragging his little sister in a borrowed wagon, and arrives just in time to be part of a great explosion, during which he proves his courage for real. The disaster was real, and the stories of all the people it affected are equally real, and sad. The writing style has it's oddities, partly because of the times (it was written in 1962, set in 1944), but also for idiosyncratic reasons (many words, such as selfrespect, are run together, and everyone is given the same, complete name each time). I enjoyed it but didn't love it.