Summary

Teenaged Turner Buckminster arrives in the coastal town of Phippsburg, Maine, in the company of his pastor father and his mother. At first, Turner enjoys the festive welcome they all receive, particularly the food. Later, however, when he’s invited to participate in a pickup baseball game, he enjoys himself less: accustomed to being a success at playing regular baseball in Boston (where he and his family came from), he is unaccustomed to the different style and speed of slow pitch baseball as played in Phippsburg, and feels humiliated when he not only strikes out, but is perceived as being too small to hold a bat properly. His departure from the field marks the first of several occasions when he fantasizes about heading west, to “the Territories”.

These thoughts occur again the following day when, after failing to jump from a cliff into the...