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This fast paced novel begins at the Potter Inn on the Wire Road. It is a dangerous time, not only for fifteen year-old Jethro Potter but for his sixteen year old sister Vienna, the reconstruction era following the Civil War. It was a time when outlaws roamed the land, a time when the Blacks began realizing they were free, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was organized, grew larger and larger, and harassed both the blacks and whites if they gambled, or resorted to stealing, and that time thousands of people were making ready to pour into the Oklahoma Territory. Jethro's life is disrupted when the Silmon gangsters kill their parents, and hang Jim Lucky, their hired Black man, and outlaws steal all of the Potter horses, $500 in gold, kidnapp Vienna and Jethro, and set out for their hide-out in the Oklahoma Territory. Turtle Ann trails the outlaws all the way to Camden Town in Arkansas, enabling the Black Militia to follow them. The militia overtakes the outlaw band near Camden, and during the pitched battle, Jethro escapes, and walks in to Camden Town. He uses his father's good name and borrows enough money to hire a posse to go after the outlaws, and in a furious chase, the posse catches up with the outlaws in the Oklahoma Territory.

This is a novel about migrant farm workers. All his life Jack O'Neal has known the joy of moving from one place to another, winter and summer, spring and fall, following the crops with his family. Jack is a hard-working boy, and when his father suddenly dies he shoulders the responsibility for supporting himself, his mother, and his little sister. In addition, he takes upon himself the burden of repaying a loan old Colonel House, a plantation owner, had made to Jack's father. Picking, grubbing, and clearing is back-breaking labor for them all, but there is fun and adventure too as they move through the South in the old truck that serves as their home. And they meet all sorts of interesting people, the kind stay-at-homes never get to know. In the end something good happens to Jack, and he knows that thereafter his mother and sister will not have to work the fields again. But not before the reader has had a rare opportunity to get to know

One night after Wolf Boy deafeats an English Stafforshire, he escapes, then travels over a 400 miles, and finally reaches Willa Webbers family just as they are moving to New Orleans. The moving van wrecks and Willas German Shepherd puppy is rescued by Old Howler, an old gray wolf, with aching dugs, because she has lost her pups to hunters. Old Howler takes the pup to her den in the swamp, nurses it, then makes kills for it, and trains him in wolf ways. Heart-broken, Willa comes to the swamp with her father and Aunt Maggy and begs Jean to look for her puppy. Jean , impressed by the girl, keeps his word, but it takes him a long time to find the animal. Old Howler, though cunning, is old, and no match for the younger male wolf and his mate. Finally, the two gray wolfs surprise Old Howler, and Wolf Boy arrives too late to save her. Jean discovers the dog and uses fresh meat to entice him to come home. Jean captures Wolf Boy in the smokehouse. People come from afar to see the wolf-dog. Brush Lockwood, a dog fighting thug, steals Wolf Boy, takes him far away, and fights him in several states. Wolf Boy is undefeated. But he hates his masterhomeJeans home. Willa comes up from New Orleans, but decides to leave Wolf Boy with Jean.

Zane Haney has been forced to take care of the family in the bayou country because his father is in the Veterans hospital. Zane receives help from his grandfather, but his burden is heavy. On top of Zanes daily problem of putting food on the table, after a tornado strikes near the Haney shack, a huge whooping crane hobbles out of the thicket into Mama Haneys chicken yard, scaring Bubba, Zanes younger brother, and Luci, his baby sister. Zane stops Bubba from shooting the whooper, which Mama later names Old Crip, because Zane had learned the whooper was almost extinct. Although Mama doesnt like it one bit, since Zane is the breadwinner, she lets him keep the giant crane, doctor its leg and wing, and feed it. Zane overcomes many obstacles as he struggles to keep the family fed, knowing the doctors had given up on Papa Haney walking again except Zane never gave up hope, and somehow he had a weird feeling that if he could get the whooper we

Jean LeBlanc had lived in the Louisiana swamp country all his 14 years. He loved the swamp, just as his father did. Jean had never gone to school, and neither had his father, but Papa taught him what a man needed to know in order to live in the swamp. Jean could shoot alligators, trap muskrats, and catch fish almost as well as any grown man in the bayou. But things were changing. Big Caterpillar tractors were shoving up the black earth and filling the swampland with noise and blue diesel smoke. The state of Louisiana was building a road through the swamp, and the animals were moving farther into the wilds. A man couldn't make a living by hunting and trapping. Papa had to go to work on the offshore oilrigs out in the Gulf of Mexico, and Jean had to look after his mother and sister while Papa was gone. Taking his father's place proved to be more difficult and dangerous than Jean had imagined. But it was a maturing experience, and it helped Jean to accept the fact that nothing stays the same. Both he and Papa had come to realize that the old way of life was gone, and that for Jean, the new life must include school.