This is the true story of Art, who, in 1910, was made to quit school and go to work. Art worked in sawmills around Green Bay, Wisconsin, and in a steel mill down in Milwaukee, then decided to hop a train to Montana to work in the wheat fields. But a drought caused him to change his course and go up to Moose Jaw, Canada, to find work up there. While in Moose Jaw, he shattered his leg and had to stay six months while recuperating. He hopped another train to Portland, Oregon, where he decided to ride a paddle boat up the Columbia River to Oregon. It was while he was working there that he was drafted into World War I. While in boot camp, the war ended, and in September he was honorable discharged from the service. He spent a few years up in Alaska, trapping fur-bearing animals and making enough money to buy a little farm in Parkdale, Oregon, located in the Hood River Valley. Throughout this story of a boy coming of age into adulthood is the story of a young United States and her coming of age at the turn of the century and into the late 1920s.