This is a true story about a young boy with a little fiction added throughout. It begins in Guntersville, Alabama in 1932 when Charles Thomas Parker is born on a river boat on the Tennessee River. At five years of age, He and his mother, Naomer, move to Oakland, California. and then to the mountains of the Gold Rush Country. Charlie is boarded out in a number of homes. Some homes good and some he is starved, beaten and mistreated.

After several years his mother marries, and Charlie finally has the farm and animals he has always wanted. At this age he is a Huckleberry Finn type of character in a small town with his dogs Venture, one of the first Rottweilers in United States, and a pup that is part wolf. He and his dogs and a colt that he raised from a baby. live near the Mokelumne river.