Sent to live with relatives on their farm because of his unhappy home life, an eleven-year-old city boy meets his distant cousin Harris and is given an introduction to a whole new world.
Eleven-year-old Eldon, growing up on a northern Minnesota farm describes the scenes around him and recounts his old Norwegian uncle's tales of an almost mythological logging past.
A fourteen-year-old boy who has been neglected by irresponsible parents spends a wonderful summer on a farm where his grandmother cooks for two elderly brothers.
Carley recalls the extraordinary summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he first came to northern Minnesota to stay with his blacksmith Uncle David and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.