By example of his dogged devotion to work, Jack teaches his young sons, Lewis and Walter, the importance of self-reliance and independence by taking assorted carpenter to provide for his family during the struggles of the great Depression and insurmountable personal tragedies.

In the end, Jack triumphs. After relocating his family to the promise land, Nevada, he spends the next 10 years helping to build the greatest Bureau and Reclamation project in the nation's history under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that employs thousands of workers--and remains one a major producer of electricity today, the Boulder Dam (or Hoover Dam as it was renamed), in this inspirational and heartwarming autographical novel written by his first-born son.