Set in 1918, Dear Frank offers the reader a glimpse of life in the Boston area during the waning days of World War I. Young Andrew writes to Frank, his older brother who is fighting overseas, intent upon keeping him abreast of all that is going on in his hometown, especially the Boston Red Sox, led by the young, hard-hitting Babe Ruth. Meticulously researched and inventively written in an epistolary format, Dear Frank introduces the middle grade reader to the stress and strain of war, as well as to the intricacies of major league baseball as it weathers a difficult year. Although Ruth is a larger-than-life character, he is not the central character in this study of family dynamics.