Richard Ford
14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry — a housewife and a golf pro — in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job (and his sense of purpose) he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.
In Montana, naive teenager George longs to escape from his broken home before his dysfunctional parents push him over the edge. When George meets pretty drifter Lucy, she easily convinces him and his friend Claude to join her on a road trip to Montana in hopes of breaking her brother out of jail.
