Jack Olson's boyhood home, North Dakota's Turtle Mountains, is an oasis of deciduous forest in the vastness of the Great Plains that straddles the United States' border with Canada. These stories of his youth capture the people and lifestyle of the rural, pre-World War II Midwest. Today, gravel and macadamized roads have replaced some of the old wagon trails. SUV's, pickup trucks, and snowmobiles cover ground once traversed by cutters and dray horses. But in many other ways, life is lived seasonally today in the Turtle Mountains as it always has been.