Jack and Jill: A Village Story (Unabridged‪)‬

Louise May Alcott wrote Jack and Jill: A Village Story in 1880, 12 years after the publication of Little Women. Like that most famous of her novels, Jack and Jill takes place in a small New England town, and examines the lives of its inhabitants.

The story opens on the first sledding day of the season, and all of the children in town are out in force. Our hero and heroine, 13-year-olds Jack Minot and Janey Pecq, go down a particularly treacherous run and are both seriously injured.

Over the next year, Jack and Jill (as she is called) are nurtured back to health by their widowed mothers. As the seasons pass, we become intimately acquainted with not only Jack and Jill, but their group of friends. As in Little Women, Alcott's fine character studies leave us with indelible impressions of these young people, touching upon humor, honor, patience, temperance, great sorrow and even greater delight in the world around them and the love they feel for one another.