Senator Jim Jeffords's disarmingly frank memoir recounts his idyllic small-town childhood in Rutland, Vermont, his somewhat unruly adolescence, putting himself through Yale University with the help of NROTC, traveling the world during his three-year navy service, and his courtship of Elizabeth Daley when he was a Harvard Law School student.

In his first term as Vermont state senator, Jeffords already had a reputation for being a maverick Republican. He supported welfare bills and environmental protection. As Vermont's attorney general, he helped draft and then implement some of the most...