内容简介：
My early childhood was great. But my father died when I was six, after which we lived with my mother's father, my Grandfather Mercer. That, too, was a good life, but when my mother remarried, things started to deteriorate, and it got worse after my grandfather died four years after my father. Mother died only a year later. I was eleven, and things got so bad that I felt the only way to live was to run away and live in the woods. An eleven-year-old boy did not have many rights in West Virginia back then, and it was only by the kindness of an old hermit that I was able to live, go to school and finally graduate and join the Marines when World War II started. This then is my story; it was often hard, and almost always lonely. This is my life as I lived it, and what happened along the way brought me to a wonderful way of life that I still enjoy today.