Sand and the River is the story of the Gage family of Oklahoma, taking place largely in the 20's and 30's. Oklahoma, not long a state, was booming. Oil wells were popping up in many areas of the state. Towns that had existed only as small farming communities or had not existed at all were suddenly bustling cities. Many of the large--huge?--oil companies that were familiar names in America for most of the twentieth century got their starts in the Oklahoma oil fields. Lots of people got rich. The Gages were not among them; they were, for the most part, laborers, overseeing the pumping oil wells, or, in the case of Frank Gage, helping the actually drilling for oil. One brother, Walter, became an agent for the Oklahoma Bureaus of Investigation and Identification. His story was told--a part of it--in A Few Dead Indians, the novel that preceded this one. Frank Gage, unlike his brother, was part of the rough-and-tumble world known as the oil patch. He didn't mind a little fight now and then, a little drink, and the occasional woman. And even the occasional brush with the law.