A lonely boy''s landscape encompasses the U. S. Middle Westand California during the Great Depression 1930s through theWorld War II home front and late 1940s. Broken shards ofyouthful memory: rooming with strangers, moving from placeto place with sudden frequency and continual uncertaintybecause of poverty and a mother''s marital failures. Seenthrough a boy''s eyes from six to sixteen, here are children andadults in the throes of financial hardship and tumultuouswartime: an empty house with deathly echoes, relatives sweptinto the cataclysm of war, a cousin gripped by suicidal grief, afamily betrayed, and unexpected humor, friendship, hope andfirst love. He escapes into movies, comic books, adventurousimagination with fantasy excursions, and fascination withguns. Through it all is his mother, raised on dreams of aluxurious life but thwarted by doomed relationships as shesearches for love and security when both are rationed ortransient. He lives an adolescence not knowing who he is orwhere he belongs as events propel him toward the loominghorizon of manhood.
