The sensitive treatment of a boy's formative years, skirting the good work done in Salinger's portrayal of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. The four years spent in the small town of Houghton, New Hampshire, after the Martins have moved from Boston, see young Ray Martin's search for happiness with his contemporaries and his parents, to prove his strength as a young man, and for a life ambition.