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An observant reader will catch that the MC, Joyce, has the same name as the author... A big hint that the story is based on events in her own life, as she acknowledges in the back of the book.
Joyce's older brother is serving in Vietnam. She's living in a tent on the roof of her house, because while she loves her older sister, her sister is just plain mean, and she doesn't want to have to share a room with her.
Then, she fails to lock the side gate, and a neighborhood dog wanders in while the big sister's guinea pig is outside, and does what dogs do to rodents...
Can she ever make it up to her big sister? Does she have to?
