David, the author, a 79 year-old Guadalcanal Marine, travels back to his childhood home in upstate New York along the Vermont and Massachusetts lines after 61 years absence. A former newspaper crime reporter, he is intent on solving two mysteries: what happened to his mentor, a county doctor who disappeared in 1937? And what was the role of a pistol he saw his father bury in a bedroom wall in the Dutch-built home of the 1700s?
It's life in the country, with the new old time school house that replaced the one-room; square dances for recreation and Jewish immigrants tolerated Ku Klux Klan oppression.
David contrasts the old time doctor, Ol' Doc Taylor, with today's physicians whom he charges with hypocrisy and the over whelming desire to make a buck over treating a patient.
There's the Polish town drunk who digs wells, cleans outhouse pits and plays the fiddle; the synagogue of his bar mitzvah, now the home of an Irish lady; his papa sparring with a known Nazi from Stephentown; there's the day he streaked naked through the village, down Route 66, to the horror of New England's pollyannas; and there's the visit to the ancient New England cemetery where he chats with the obelisk atop a tombstone.
David walks the path that horses and buggies once traveled. The doctors have long since moved to the high rent districts where the fees are higher; the grocery store and square dance hall is now a post office, Richter's house and David's home are gruesome messes and Ol' Doc Taylor is dead. The muscular are bedraggled, the roads are now streets and a gallon of gas that once cost 10 cents is now $1.94.9...
The swimming hole is plugged, the historic church bell doesn't ring andalong Route 66 and Stephentown Road - ghosts abound
David talks to them, especially the one in the hill.