Odie (Odysseus) O'Bannion, the story's narrator, is one of four orphans who escape the Black Witch (Thelma Brickman), who runs a school for Indian children in Minnesota in 1932. Only one of the four is an Indian, a Sioux boy called Mose whose tongue has been cut out. The others are Albert, Odie's older brother, and Emmy, the daughter of a teacher killed by a tornado who is taken in by Mrs. Brickman.
Albert remembers an Aunt Julia in St. Louis, all the family he and Odie have left, and so St. Louis becomes their goal. They flee in a canoe, pursued all the way by the Black Witch and her obedient husband. The journey includes many trials and temptations. They are kidnapped by a one-eyed farmer (Krueger's Cyclops). As for sirens, these include Maybeth, a girl Odie falls in love with in a temporary Depression settlement of homeless people, and Sister Eve, a beautiful faith healer. Odie wants to go to Chicago with Maybeth's family and then wants to join Sister Eve's traveling crusade, yet somehow, even after abandoning his three fellow travelers, he keeps heading toward St. Louis, where he hopes to find home and family. And perhaps a loving God he can believe in.
Many surprises await Odie in St. Louis at Aunt Julia's house on Ithaca Street (Homer again).
Krueger tries to give his tale the nature of a myth, although this comes a little late to be convincing. Myth or not, Homer or not, the novel tells an uplifting story of tender youth in a tender land discovering a place to belong.
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