Jack Catcher's parents are dead--his mom died of a sickness and his dad of a broken heart--and he wants to get out of Oklahoma, where dust storms have killed everything green and hopeful. So when former classmate Jane Lewis and her little brother, Tony, show up in his yard with plans to steal a dead neighbor's car and make a break for Texas, Jack doesn't need much convincing to go with them. But a run-in with one of the era's most notorious gangsters puts a crimp in Jane's plan, and soon the three kids are riding the rails among hoboes, gangsters, and con men, racing to warn a carnival-wrestler-turned-bank-robber of the danger headed toward him faster than a black blizzard on the prairie horizon. This road trip adventure is a colorful ride through Depression-era America.