An Old-Fashioned Girl tells the story of Polly. She is Fanny, Maudie and Tom's poor "cousin" (actually no real relation) who stays with them during the summer as kids. They have a close relationship and good natured Polly teaches the other naughty children the right and wrong way to behave.
Eight years later, she returns to their town as a teacher, working to support her family. She realises she is in love with Tom, but while she was away, he gets engaged to Trixie, a girl he doesn't love but he is too proud to break it off. Polly is heartbroken but hides her heartache. Even though she is very poor, she makes the best of every situation and always does the right thing by Fanny, Maudie and Tom (https://goo.gl/8Vs56j).
Louisa May Alcott, November 29, 1832 March 6, 1888, was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.
Her family suffered severe financial difficulties and Alcott worked to help support the family from an early age. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which Alcott wrote novels for young adults.
Alcott died at age 55 of a stroke in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death (Wikipedia).