When Gordon Noel was five years old he came home from school to find that his father had left his mother for another woman. There were no roadmaps for divorced kids in 1940s Montana, and for the next thirteen years, Noel seldom saw his father despite living in the same town. In , Noel writes with humor and honesty about coming of age in a fractured family without a father, about his deep connection to the landscape of the West, and--on the brink of being thrown out of school--about two teachers and two friends who helped him strike out for a world beyond Montana.