It all begins when Rocky follows Mick Strum around town while he sketches its people, animals and graveyard. Mick has been commissioned by Rocky's Kansas town to create a memorial to their war dead.
As Rocky learns to respect Mick and his talents, he helps her to develop her own artistic sensibilities.
But the townspeople see things in Mick's drawings that they don't want to know or accept about themselves. Can Mick help them accept one monument that will be meaningful to everyone?
Gary Paulsen grew up in the Philippines and has worked as a sailor, archer, trapper, singer, actor and carnival worker, amongst others. He is the author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, and has won the prestigious Newbery Honor Award three times, for his books The Winter Room, Hatchet and Dogsong. He lives in New Mexico and on a boat in the Pacific, with his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen.