WHEN STEPHEN LONGSTREET was twelve years old, his grandfather (an unreconstructed G.A.R. officer) and his mother (one of the prettiest women of her day) took him across the continent and back on a year-long trek in a Model-T Ford. Now, a quarter of a century later, the mature and sensitive writer looks back on that time and projects it with drama, with humor, and with love. Before little Stevie returned from the trip, he had had his thirteenth birthday; he had fallen in love with a heartless sophisticate of fourteen; he had lived among the beer barons of St. Louis, been present at a hilarious Irish wedding in Montana, fished in the bayous of the Cajun country, learned to handle and love a hunting hawk, and absorbed a great deal about the meaning of both life and death. His mother, a woman of infinite determination and femininity, and his grandfather, as articulate, tough, and soft-hearted an old codger as ever chewed on a cigar, showed the boy our country—a picture full of courage and humor, pathos and wild hilarity, and, for those old enough to remember 1919, fraught with a heart-warming nostalgia. Pen-and-ink sketches by the author, a well-known artist, supplement a narrative style already famous for its rich vividness.