In 1875, teenager Lucy Nickerson slips into a haymow dalliance with family farmer Morgan Dinkins, a liaison that brings Rob Nickerson into the world with the unpromising prospects of a woods colt-the child of an unwed maiden of the mountains. But it's the pious people around the hamlet of Nabors Mill who euphemistically call Rob a woods colt. The more charitable mountain folk accept him into their milieu and refer to him simply as "Morgan's other boy." The quirks of fate and turns of misfortune eventually bring Rob and Lucy enduringly together with his natural father, giving the boy a happy childhood. But the halcyon years end abruptly when Rob's first romance collapses in a searing rejection, plunging the young man into depression that drives him to the sheer edge of self-destruction. His youthful instincts pull him back from the brink and spur him to leave home and family. He makes his way on foot up to the mountain crest and hitches a wagon ride down the other side to seek his future in the Shenandoah Valley. Rob's valley adventures land him a job as a farm hand on the big spread of Mennonite Jonas Schank where he meets Sally, the hired man's daughter. Passions flare and, forbidden to marry by Sally's parents, the lovers elope in the night and follow the moon to West Virginia, only to be tracked down by Earle Harman, Sally's enraged father. After adroitly evading Earle and a deputy sheriff with bloodhounds, the fugitives flee on foot, braving a ferocious midnight storm, only to be captured the next day while sleeping in a barn. Earle jerks Sally away from Rob, who is then cast into jail, tried and convicted of consorting with an under-aged girl. His imprisonment marks the end of The Tale of a Woods Colt, the first book of the serial trilogy In the Land of Rob. Rob's stint in the penitentiary, his subsequent valley adventures that lead him back to more adventures in his mountain home, and the bizarre double love life he takes up are portrayed