Set during the financial collapse of the 1920s, this novel is about a young man, Clayton, whose father had purchased mineral lands in the Deep South, and with the idea of developing these had encouraged the scientific interest of his son, sending him to a German university. Returning from Germany, Clayton soon found himself driven from home, and hard at work in the heart of the Kentucky mountains.
Though there was nothing in the pretty glen when he came but a mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old apple-trees, he was busy from dawn to dark, and had no time to grow miserable. His work was hard, but had the new zest of independence. The story focuses on the his meeting with a half-wild young creature he had met on the mountain one day who gave a new and sudden zest to his interest in mountain life.
