Fifteen-year-old Tex is a laid back, part-time troublemaker from a small Oklahoma town. He has a rapport with his horse that goes beyond the normal human-animal bond. His connection to animals, and his frequent use of animal-themed metaphors to describe other characters, reveals his temperament: he is empathetic, if not always intuitive, and he finds simple happiness in the joys of nature. The city, on the other hand, confounds him, and it is where he finds trouble.

The reader sees all the characters and events through his first-person narration. Tex’s voice and his vocabulary are simple and straightforward, and his point of view is often guileless, even naïve. He grapples with who he wants to be: Should he be like Pop, his negligent and itinerant father, who finds trouble of his own? Or should he be like Mason, his determined and responsible older brother? Many of his childish actions—setting fire to toothpicks in art class, capping typewriter keys at school—derive from his desire to emulate his father. He seeks attention because he has not received it from Pop. Upon discovering that Pop is not his biological father, Tex must reevaluate who he might become.