This beautiful novel of friendship between a boy and an old man takes place during World War I--when the death of thousands in Europe takes a backseat to a lone murder in the rural quiet of Drennan's Crossing on the banks of the Kentucky River. The narrator, 14-year-old Phillip, describes his special relationship with Joe, a new-comer to the small Southern community, as being ..".like a rush of water down a narrow creek bed, widening, deepening, opening up fascinating new channels..." "Most everythin' was put here for a purpose," the old man tells him, and Phillip finds himself viewing nature and the God who created it in exciting new ways. Suddenly, murder disrupts the peaceful neighborhood, and Phillip is forced to face strange, violent feelings in his own heart. Struggling to come to terms with evil, he questions God's role in the scheme of things. Then he discovers something Joe knew all along--the legacy of Drennan's Crossing. "It is our Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird," says Kentuckian Jean Ann Myatt in a post on "Good Reads."