A highly personal account of a Pacific Northwest rural childhood during the Great Depression and World War II-in Pacific County, bordered by both the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean, where had come earlier the Keil Colony to establish their Commune in Menlo. Children of loggers, fisherfolk and farmers attending the Willapa Valley School in the mile-wide Willapa Valley named for a Chinookan language Native American tribe, gone except in bloodlines of descendants of some earlier immigrants. Families living ordinary risks of dangerous work in a distressed economy, followed by threat of invasion. Where neighbors longer in residence distrusted later enemy alien immigrants of the same European background. Especially when after an area-wide deliberately caused power outage, the FBI came to check for sabotage.