Winner of the Adirondack Center for Writing Award for Children's Literature. William Chadwick is a scholar with big plans although he's only nine years old. His comfortable life as a popular, rich schoolboy in London is ruined when his grandparents die, and he is forced move to a remote American wilderness to live with the father he has never met. William's father is a poor Adirondack woodsman working as a guide for the wealthy elites, showing them where to fish and hunt. During William's harsh and lonely life as a guide in the deep woods he becomes an expert woodsman and boat builder, and learns secrets about his family that his grandparents kept hidden.