In the spring of 1879, a sixteen-year-old boy from the Virginia uplands finds himself alone on the Great Plains with a Colt Navy revolver and the family mule. What was meant to be a frontier adventure with two of his friends has turned into a solitary ordeal as he makes his way across a sparsely settled and largely lawless piece of the world. He's bound for California and narrates his journey in harrowing and hilarious detail, telling the story of a farm boy from back east who becomes -- through pluck and heart and more than a little gunplay -- a man.