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Some mothers cannot live up to the 1950s ideal of the nurturing homemaker. Olla Wiberg, mother of two, bears her last child in Kentucky in 1954. Two years later, she drives them cross-country to Washington State and the first of many children's homes. She lives a nomadic lifestyle, pursuing her Pentecostal beliefs. Periodically, she reclaims the kids, taking them along in her frequent wanderings. This instability is particularly detrimental to her son Jeremy's emotional health. Poverty and his mother's unrelenting religious fervor destroy his self-esteem, making him vulnerable to bullies. Abuse by adults in authority always follows any attempt to defend himself and teaches him to accept torment passively. Learning from the cruelties and other mistakes of those he meets, he longs for a settled existence. But old habits die hard, and Jeremy's life becomes that of a drifter. How will he attain the inner peace necessary to establish himself anywhere permanently?
This stark glimpse behind the veil of much-touted postwar domesticity fully exposes a much grittier America of that time. History texts usually only make passing mention of unfit mothers as they were generally perceived in the 1950s and '60s. However, this book reveals a young boy's struggle to accept society's perception of his dysfunctional mom. Neither does Wiberg flinch at the subject of mental illness and the misconceptions that dogged such conditions during that era. The author's past struggles to maintain romantic relationships with women appear to have their origins in his fraught relationship with his mother and her disapproval of everything about him. However, he is immensely proud that despite growing up in circumstances that might drive many to crime, he was never arrested and maintains a clean record still. Wiberg's book reinforces the truth that one's choices in life are not always determined by background.