Spike! The journey of a boy & his dog during the Great Depression Billy Creelman, the teenager in this story, grew up in the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression and between two world wars, a turbulent and frightening time. Banks, factories, and stores went out of business. Hundreds of thousands of formerly proud workers stood for hours in food lines and on street corners in all kinds of weather, selling apples and pencils or holding out tin cups for change. "Brother can you spare a dime?" After the bank foreclosed on his parent's tiny dairy farm in Harford County, Maryland, the family was forced to split up. With his faithful companion and best friend, Spike, a Border collie at his side. Billy began hitchhiking to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he planned to live with his Uncle Dan, a war hero with a mysterious past. During their journey, Billy and Spike met some bad people and some good people. They suffered a violent separation, but after life-threatening experiences, were finally reunited under harrowing circumstances. On his journey, Billy saw firsthand some of the destructive effects of the World War and the Depression on the lives of Americans and for the first time looked fear in the face, and learned more that he could have imagined about violence and poverty.