FORREST WALKER, spared by the end of the Vietnam draft, spends his first few months after high school at hard labor. At summer's end, he escapes a bleak future for the open road. Fate provides Walker with a job of sorts, an indentured servitude. Over the ensuing fall and winter his make or break subsistence in the coulees of the Ocooch Mountains, becomes a soulful rite of passage. He yearns for the opportunity to make a difference.While his body is...