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In 1892, however, she was afflicted with an illness that lasted for several years, an illness that may have resulted from a real or perceived absence of outlets for her intelligence and creativity.".

As Albion Bacon's autobiography opens, she is an artistically inclined mother of four in a middle-class neighborhood in Evansville, Indiana. When her two oldest children contracted scarlet fever, she turned first to their school and then to the slums in an attempt to find the source of their infection. As she tracked through the filthy alleys and climbed the dark tenement staircases, she became convinced that society's most pressing need was for better housing. Though slight and reticent, she applied her powers of stamina, organization and dedication to an ideal, in working to help the harassed and overworked inhabitants of the slums. She formulated a housing bill in 1909 and saw it defeated by the state legislature in 1911 but Passed in 1913. Bacon tells her story modestly and with wit and a sense of wonder at her role and success in these proceedings.

From the Wabash and Erie Canal to the Faultless Caster Factory, Evansville has seen much of its history disappear. In the early twentieth century, vestiges of old Evansville like the B'nai Israel temple and Coal Mine Hill gave way to a modern city. Numerous changes in the thirty years following World War II altered the physical appearance of the city, including the removal of the old Central High School, Assumption Cathedral, Gear Town, and more. Less physical but nevertheless vital history like the struggle over Civil Rights in Evansville has been overlooked and, until now, lost. Weaving together a captivating fast-paced account illustrated with over eighty images, award-winning Evansville historian Dr James MacLeod tells the fascinating story of what was lost, what came in its place, and what was preserved against the odds.