Publisher's Synopsis
On a scorching, dusty road in south-central Illinois in the late 1930's, Doc finds Cully, eleven, running from his father's death in the fields. He takes Cully in, as he had taken in other stray creatures, and teaches him the life of a rural veterinarian. Thus the boy gains an understanding that death, a commonplace in nature's cycle, reaches animals and people, young and old, by accident or intent. One day a letter from Connecticut, three-months delayed, arrives for the boy Cully from the mother who had abandoned him two years earlier. The letter, an old out-of-tune piano, a curling photograph, and some names buried deep in his vanished youth draw Doc with Cully eastward on the National Road, Cully toward his future and Doc toward his forgotten youth.
