Lewis, in the summer of 1962, is poised to take the plunge into seventh grade. It is his last summer before starting into teenage years and-eventually-adulthood. Lewis and his younger friend, Randolph Poteet, experience a last summer when the world was still clinging to its innocence. Out in the Western prairie, it is the time before the hippie culture, before the Vietnam War, and before the knowledge we knew could destroy the world.