This is the second book in the Jake Winters series, beginning with The Load. Jake is a cross-country truck driver with a spotless driving record, a narrow brush with death in Texas notwithstanding. He covers up to 130,000 miles a year.

Beyond driving alone, this bachelor from western N.Y. has no back-home family worries. Then he meets the boy, Peter Stevenson. The complications surrounding the early life of this boy work out to change Jake's simplistic life and outlook forever.

Jake picks up an antiquated piece of mining equipment from the small town of Slippery Gulch, Montana, forty miles north of Butte, destined for Reno, Nevada.

Jake considers himself a convenience Christian. He believes in the level of company management finagles Jake into a special assignment. Whether it's God or the devil is not clear. Peter Stevenson, Jake's prayer a century ago. Jake is forced to finish raising this little waif who knows nothing of the world beyond the mercantile of Slippery Gulch.

The saga of Jake Winters is attracting readers from single moms to perplexed das to educators bent on hooking boys on books. And not a few girls are hooked on this saga as well.