Volume I: An Odyssey of Childhood & Early Youth is a fictional account, together with personal, dramatic license, of the era of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. It focuses on the joys and fears of children and families in desperate times. The novel portrays the character of several families and develops the search for identity among the children. Through this generates a rather intriguing triangle among the three principal, maturing characters. The sense of time and place beyond description is by actions and perceptions of an assortment of characters at school, play and work while coping with a difficult economy, underlying questions of death, further triggered by the approaching war. The reality of war comes to the forefront of the childrenas awareness when an English girl, who experienced the Blitz, joins their ninth grade class. Later this awareness becomes deeply implanted in the consciousness of most characters when the protagonist joins the Marines.