A study of America's vanishing country lifestyle focuses on a family farm, owned by a single family since 1880, near Rochester, Minnesota, capturing the good times, hardships, rituals of rural life, and dramatic changes that have made the farm's existence uncertain

“John Hildebrand sets out in a canoe . . . to explore the great riverway of northwestern Canada and Alaska. . . . The geography is closely rendered and the characters especially sharply drawn. The country is filled with mad dropouts at river fish camps, good-hearted girls in the towns, sullen natives in tumbledown villages, cranky old-timers, terrible drunks and worse moralizers who live off the wild landscape and its abundant resources. . . . This is a fine work, and Hildebrand is a fine writer.”—Charles E. Little, Wilderness