Publisher's Synopsis
John T. Unger, a teenager from the Mississippi River town of Hades, is sent to a private boarding school near Boston. During the summer he visits the homes of his classmates, the majority of whom are from wealthy families.In the middle of his sophomore year, a young man named Percy Washington is placed in Unger's dorm. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it is only to Unger. Percy invites Unger to his home for the summer, the location of which he only states as being "in the West." Unger accepts.During the train ride Percy boasts that his father is "by far the richest man in the world", and boasts that his father "has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel."Unger later learns that he is in Montana, in the "only five square miles of land in the country that's never been surveyed," and Percy's boasts turn out to be true.
