During the Great Depression 1930s period, through hard work and recurrent rejection, a syttende mai son of immigrant Norwegian parents who divorce seeks, by personal achievement, recognition of worth by himself, his family and his peers. As older brother, sisters and stepbrothers depart as soon as possible from a farm tension-riven by efforts to save it from a tax-sale by building a dairy farm for cash to pay taxes, buy clothing for, at first, nearly a dozen family members. Efforts to grow not only sustenance food, but to trade cordwood and potatoes for grocery store credit creates more and more responsibility; sheer labor falls on that son, whose stepfatheras open hatred forces the son at sixteen to leave the farm on the edge of his beloved Ottawa National Forest.