In 1932, 12-year-old Odysseus "Odie" O'Bannion and his older brother Albert are the only two white children raised in the brutality of Lincoln Indian Training School in central Minnesota.

Drawn by beautiful music and food, the children join a revival meeting of the Gideon Crusade, a snake-handling church led by Sister Eve, who performs faith healings.

As they wait for antivenom to arrive, Sister Eve explains that she had cured the actors once and let Sid convince her to hire them to "prime the pump" in new towns.

Following harmonica music to a local Hooverville, he joins the Schofields, an extended family of dispossessed Kansas farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl.

The children reach Saint Paul, Minnesota, stay with lesbian restaurant owners Gertie and Flo in the Jewish ghetto, learn to hop freight, and go downtown with the intent of mailing a letter to Maybeth.

Stunned, he wanders the huge St. Louis Hooverville until he stumbles across the Gideon Crusade, where Sister Eve encourages him to return to Julia.

Clyde Brickman served life in prison; Albert died in World War II; "The Silent Sioux Slugger" Amdacha quit professional baseball to reform the Indian education system.

Children traveling down midwestern American rivers to reunite with an aunt, pursued by unjust legal forces with racist overtones, is intended to be a modernized retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Albert's traveling pseudonym, Norman, explained in the text as coming from the 17-year-old being neither boy "nor man", is first told to the one-eyed veteran Jack, much the way Odysseus tells the cyclops Polyphemus his name is "Nobody".

Upon arrival, Aunt Julie's brothel is unexpectedly full of rowdy men, the way Penelope's home has been invaded by unwanted suitors.

Lewis's character in turn is inspired by the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson, whom Sid refers to (in text) as a role model for Sister Eve and the entire Gideon Crusade.