This is a story about a young boy coming of age during the Great Depression. He develops from a young boy, fairly restricted to home and the immediate farm area, to a young teen allowed to roam the river bottoms, hills, and mountainous terrain surrounding his home. He leaves the protection of parental decisions and supervision to make life and death decisions affecting the lives of his dogs, the Pritchard boys, and himself.

A constant theme is determination or hard work and that a man who helps himself will get what he wants. This quality is first seen when Billy decides to save all the money he can earn to buy his coon pups and is demonstrated by his willingness to work in a variety of creative ways. For two years he catches worms and crawfishes, picks berries, harvests vegetables to sell, and hires himself out...