Like many Americans at the dawn of the 1980s, Richard and Jeanne Coffey were confused about America's direction on the world stage. It was a good time to learn how to live independently. Bogtrotter is the story of a man and woman who sold most of their material possessions to buy time away from their ordered urban lives to explore simplicity and discover their connection to the natural world. Living in a rude one-room cabin on a northern Minnesota bog, they found remarkable happiness, deep respect for one another and fresh awareness of what it is that brings joy to the human heart.

Firemen discover a man's body and a valuable stamp collection after a fire in a mobile home park on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. While philatelic experts try to understand how a trailer park resident built a collection worth three million dollars, the county sheriff-and the stamps-go missing. Soon, a chase that begins on Lake Superior and zig zags through the streets of London, ends on a yacht in the Aegean Sea, where the price of looking for rare stamps in the underworld is likely to cost a man more than money.

Newspaper rookie, Alex Woollcott, assigned to produce a story about an aging Colorado adventurer, finds the man and a century-old tale of treasure. Alex soon learns the power of a story-and the danger of chasing a compelling narrative that has the bones to draw a reader into ever deeper waters to find a story's end. Alex is cynical, at first, but he finds his doubts dissolving in the storm of historical revelations that arise from the adventurer's search for-a postage stamp, the Three Penny Plum.