Something strange is happening at Whippoorwill Corners. Runaway Jeep Harris has come to make his home on a ranch in the sparsely populated plains of western Oklahoma, but finds Whippoorwill School a really big challenge what with kids wearing out-of-date clothes and playing games like Red Rover that he never heard of before. And then there's Mae Kelley, a nerd if he ever saw one, who keeps worrying about her brother who is on a ship in a place called Pearl Harbor. War breaks out, so the other kids tell him, and with Japan! His newly claimed aunt and uncle accuse him of skipping school even...