Errol was a war orphan, left to raise himself while his father fought in World War II and while his severely depressed mother struggled to hold together her young family. Growing up in a backwoods town where life more closely resembled the 1920s than the 1940s, Errol hunted pennies to buy treats, surfed on borrowed skiffs behind the paddle wheels of passing river boats, and sought adult influences wherever he could find them. Viewing this world through both a child's and an adult's eyes, "Hunting Pennies" offers vivid glimpses of innocence transitioning seamlessly into sophisticated efforts to find peace with the past. With publication credits as diverse as National Public Radio's All Things Considered and "Madison Review," Hess has distilled half a century of poetry into this memoir in verse, loading its pages with humor, melancholy, and a healthy dose of Huck Finn-style adventure.