The Dorrance Domain by Carolyn Wells

The Dorrance children live with their gentle, overburdened grandmother in a cramped New York boarding house, where every meal, room, and rule sharpens their longing for a real home of their own. Dorothy, Lilian, Leicester, and Fairy are a vivid quartet—practical, sensible, blunt, and delightfully impulsive—whose humor and affection soften the family's quiet hardship after the loss of their grandfather's fortune and the grand house on Fifty-eighth Street. As summer approaches, their dreams of the seashore or country are thwarted by money troubles, and Dorothy begins to think like a true household manager, probing the family's finances and searching for possibilities. When a sale of the mountain hotel "Our Domain" falls through, she turns disappointment into inspiration: why not live there themselves, cook for themselves, and make a home from what they already have? Set on Lake Ponetcong in New Jersey, the new life becomes a lively experiment in thrift, teamwork, hospitality, boating, picnics, and shared adventure. But beneath the cheerful days, repairs, rising expenses, and the threat of selling the city house remind the family that comfort must be earned, and that their bright new beginning depends on courage, ingenuity, and sacrifice. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.