This is a highly entertaining, fast -moving, vibrant account of the life of a man who didn't always take the obvious pathways, but always made the most of the pathways he found himself along. This book offers a great deal of colorful detail about the boy's earliest days as a hardscrabble kid growing up in a big California family, through his high-spirited youth and all through his adult years, including great swaths of thrill-seeking time spent in South and Central America. We meet a great many characters from his life and are privy to the various escapades in which the lot of them engage.