An account of a man's childhood in North Dakota's Red River Valley in the 1940's and early 1950's, depicting the haphazard, often comical, hit-and-miss process by which the child and adolescent tries to build an identity.

Milbank and Mitchell, dissimilar in size and separated by more than two hundred miles, have more in common than might appear at first glance. In the first half of the twentieth century towns such as Milbank and Mitchell formed hubs for commerce, social activities, and culture. Eric Fowler and Sheila Delaney looked at their communities from different viewpoints, but their childhood and young adult memories of South Dakota share common themes.