Thimble Summer is a 1938 novel by American author Elizabeth Enright,[1] set in Depression-era rural Wisconsin.

[2] The very evening that nine-year-old Garnet Linden finds a silver thimble in a dried-up riverbed near the farm where she lives, the drought that has threatened her family's financial future is broken with a rainstorm.

The days that follow are filled with exciting events: the Lindens come by money to rebuild their barn, Garnet's pig wins a blue ribbon at the fair, and a young boy named Eric comes to live with the Lindens as their adopted son.

When the time comes for the show, Garnet is stuck on the Ferris wheel.

She can't get down for almost another hour, and the show starts in thirty minutes.