Abstract
Seven years separate Buddy Hope from his big brother Lee, but the boys have always been close, conforting and protecting each other as their father, defeated by poor land and hostile weather, sinks deeper into alcohol and rage. When a whisky-driven accident takes not only his life bu tthe life of the mother who tried so hard to shield her sons, the boys sell off what little remains of their father's tenant farm and leave Oklahoma. It is 1957, and work is still to be found in the logging camps of northern Idaho. But just outside Snake Junction, the boys stop at a roadhouse, and there Lee's country-and-western talents get him a job. The two settle in, Lee to his music -- and to women and drind -- and seventeen-year-old Buddy to roaming the landscape, at loose ends until a woman nearly twice his age turns up. Irene Sullivan is a smoky beauty iwth a secret in her past, and Lee makes a play for her. But it is Buddy she is drawn to.