Lynwood Roe spent his young years toiling in fields of tobacco and corn that grew lushly on the rolling hillsides of the eastern Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. He grows up expecting to follow a life not unlike his father and his grandfather before him. That is, if he were to reach his majority. At nine years of age he is felled by rheumatic fever which leaves him hindered with a weak heart and an uncertain future. While recovering he becomes a keen observer of his surroundings and the people who are in and out of his life. His father's passing ends his hope that he can go to college and direct his life onto a different course. Then a girl enters his life and convinces him that the future he believes to be impossible can still be realized, if he is willing to leave the farm and strike out audaciously to pursue it. The nearest big city is Louisville where he seeks employment as a first step to attaining his dreams. It is to be a summer full of awakening and discovery. Through it all he recalls moments of the past - episodes in a boy's life that shaped the young man he was to become. He is adrift but watching the horizon for a safe harbor.