This humorous, non-fiction account follows the rise, fall, and foibles of the lumber company that floated the last raft of logs down the Mississippi in mid-twentieth century. Helle Lumber Company of Savanna, Illinois, enjoyed a cast of Midwestern "characters" and classic american entrepreneurial misadventures. The book captures a time when chainsaws and other inventions changed a way of life during the logging of the great Mississippi bottoms.