Gregg Norman, author of the critically acclaimed Not My Dog, tells a tale of love, hate, and crimes most foul in the heart of the watershed decade of the last century – The Dirty Thirties. The Great Depression is just beginning, a time when hope dies and is blown away on a bone-dry wind. For Martin Wheeler, violently ousted from his father’s mansion in Montreal, injured and penniless, the advent of the worst decade in the nation’s history will forge within him a will to survive by the only assets he possesses – his wits and his gift of persuasion. On a cross country trip by rail, he fetches up in a unique city in the heart of the prairies. Beaten near death and destitute, he is taken in by an eclectic group of hobos who teach him a new way of life. Joining forces with a corrupt ex-policeman while trying to come to grips with his love for a fiercely independent woman, he moves through the darkness of the era taking what he can from his new world and those in it.