After barely surviving his entry into the world, Keeper Wick grows up worshipping his absentee father and begs to be taken on a trip someday. His father, Chance, is a traveling salesman, and Keeper saves every colorful postcard and documents every move he makes on a large, AAA roadmap. But by the time he's ten, someone else enters his life, splitting his attention: Jonnie Prettyboy, a chain-smoking thirteen-year-old girl who manages to be both tough and beautiful.
Their friendship quickly blossoms into a partnership they're too young to define. And when Jonnie decides to run away from her abusive home, she leaves Keeper inconsolable and confused. Luckily, Chance finally agrees to take Keeper on a road trip to Atlanta, and it is there that he begins his transition out of boyhood and into the real world.
Set against the backdrop of WWII, this unique mixture of a road story and coming-of-age tale creates a captivating vehicle through which we experience the love and disappointment between two kids struggling to survive in a world not of their making and a father and son who seem to grow further apart the closer they become.