Antoine Farot and Swede

When Antoine Farot takes a Louisville Slugger to Wiktor Sadlo, his abusive stepfather, he has no idea what adventures await him when he and his best buddy, Swede, hop a boxcar in Minneapolis and head south. It's Thanksgiving Day, and their plan is to escape the cold of the approaching northern winter. They meet one James Morrison, a man in his thirties with a past, and he takes them under his wing. The fifteen-year-old Antoine loses his virginity to a seventeen-year-old farm girl in southern Illinois. The three travelers get a taste of the blues on Beale Street, and Dixieland jazz on Bourbon Street. They see a bank robbery in Del Rio, Texas and the filming of an "Our Gang" movie on the set in Hollywood.