Traveling east after witnessing the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, the young man, who had seen more death in his short life than most people encounter in their entire lives, sought to rebuild the ruins of his life. His father had abandoned his mother, who had turned to prostitution to survive. She was shot when he was twelve, leaving him alone. Having learned to read at a very young age, his intelligence and attention to detail took him places typically reserved for his elders.

The young man rode the train east, determined to leave the past behind. However, before he even reached his first station, where he would change trains, his circumstances shifted. This could have been just another train ride in a lifetime of journeys, but it was not. This single trip through the snow-covered American Upper Midwest changed the trajectory of his life from that point forward.

The young man advanced in stages, moving from one situation to the next, occasionally staying just a step ahead of the law, until he arrived in Florida to tackle a project so large that multiple predecessors had failed. What sort of man would undertake a project of this size, one that would cause as much harm as this one would, and see it through to the end?