Jake and Diane, high school seniors in a small depressed Apalachian town of Farthing Virginia, run away from home. Packing only a few clothes and having little money, they accept a cross country ride. The driver, Dirk, an oversexed thirty five year old textbook salesman, abandons them on a deserted roadside in the foothills of the mountains outside of Denver. The couple, moments from death, are rescued by the arrival of an elderly couple at their mountain retreat. While Jake and Diane are being transported to the hospital, major accidents at a ski resort and on the access highways cause delay and death. Dirk returns to the east coast, travels to Florida where he meets a pair of welfare thieves preying on horny men like Dirk. He is hospitalized after being left for dead. The elderly couple take Jake under their wings. He is befriended by Michael, the paramedic member of the ambulance team who rescued him and his girlfriend. Diane returns home to her divorced father, finishes high school, moves to Georgetown on her step-father's dime and attends university with her mother while Jake works full time to afford to even start a college education. He attends school with Jack, the elderly couple's grandson who moves in from Salt Lake city. Jack nicknames Jake 'Cub. He was found in the woods, ' by his grandparents. The name sticks. In Farthing, life goes on. Young people fight to survive, physically and emotionally. A young girl is brutally murdered, her body abandoned near the town's water supply. A two-time Viet Nam veteran imagines the woods surrounding the town are full of Viet Cong which his platoon must eliminate. A young man has AIDS, fears he passed it to his young pregnant wife. He is not to be found on the day his baby girl is born. One by one the friends, left behind, connect with a love interest or a mate. Others go off to college on a surprising number of scholastic scholarships, some go in the military.
