In The Dream Bucket, Trudy Cameron, lives in an elaborate Mississippi home with her hypocritical father William, withdrawn mother Zoe, and mischievous older brother Billy Jack. It is the spring of 1909. The last session ever at Gravel Hill School comes to a close, as Trudy looks forward to her tenth birthday. She adores Papa until she hears him slap her mother for asking him where he hides his cash. Soon afterwards, Billy Jack tells Trudy that Papa ridicules her behind her back. On the last day of school, Papa gives the schoolmarm a noisy smack of a kiss, overheard by all the pupils in the one-room schoolhouse. All she has heard leaves her so angry she wishes Papa would die. When he accidentally sets fire to the family mansion and dies in the fire, she is not prepared for the shock. She believes her anger caused her father's death. Zoe also feels she caused William's death by prodding him to meet her demands. He's cautioned Zoe not to pry into his financial arrangements. He has withdrawn his money from the Taylorsburg bank because he distrusts the fraudulent bank president. She needles him to tell her where he stores his twenty-dollar gold pieces in case his life should end one day. Two men load William's body into a farm wagon. How will Zoe survive as a widow? The sudden horror causes her to forget who her children are. First Trudy and Billy Jack run after the death wagon, but they turn back to the pile of ashes, where they plan their future. On the day Papa died, they will milk the cows and begin making arrangements for the funeral. Trudy and Billy Jack make a pact never to leave the farm. Regaining her orientation, Zoe bounces back. She moves her family into a shack that needs so many repairs the sharecroppers have abandoned it. When it rains, they run with cooking pots from one leak to another. The kitchen floor has rotted into nonexistence. The cabin offers little protection from heat and cold, bears and rattlesnakes, or human predators. Samuel Benton, the Camerons' best friend, lives with his two children down the road. He tries to help Zoe, but she rejects him. She's busy harvesting the garden, milking the cows, sewing for hire, and caring for her children. She makes no plans for the future. In a hopeless situation, Trudy, Zoe, and Billy Jack fight outside forces to survive. The Bentons and the Camerons fill their bucket and empty it and fill it again. Sometimes in horror and sometimes in joy, Trudy Cameron always dreams big.