The action of the novel takes place at the end of World War I, the point at which America was losing its innocence and developing a mature awareness of its international role. Set in a rural Wisconsin town, Rascal draws parallels between events in the world at large and the experiences of an eleven-year-old boy who shares his own loss of innocence and developing maturity with a devoted companion, his pet raccoon.

North most directly signals the parallel between the American experience and that of his youthful self when the autobiographical narrator puts away his muskrat traps on Armistice Day: I burned my fur catalogues in the furnace and hung my traps in the loft of the barn, never to use them again. Men had stopped killing other men in France that day; and on that day I signed a permanent peace treaty with the animals and birds...