This picture book recounts one experience of the many endured by children who were made to attend a boarding school for Indian youth. This one took place during the 1930s in California. That was not the only place or time in which Indian children were separated from their families and made to attend U.S. government-operated schools hundreds of miles from their homes. The basis of this picture story rests in the actual life events of Lowry's father and uncle as boys, Stanley and Benny Len, who were completely cut off from their people, birth language, and value system. They were punished if they forgot to speak English, and the punishment was probably more harsh than the wooden ruler pictured here. When these boys learned that they had no way to get home for the summer and, instead, would have to stay at school and work, they used their ingenuity and courage to come up with a way to get home. A color photo of Lowry's father and uncle as men today concludes the story of how these two boys from the Mountain Maidu tribe actually did ride on the top of a railroad car all the way to Medicine Mountain in order to return home. The story for younger children only touches lightly on the surface of the Indian boarding school experience, an experience that inflicted deep pain and lifelong trauma on thousands and that is sometimes referred in other accounts as an attempt at genocide. (Ages 6-9)

In the 1930s two young brothers are sent to a government-run Indian residential school -- an experience shared by generations of Native American children. At these schools, children are forbidden to speak their native tongue and are taught to abandon their Indian ways.Native American artist Judith Lowry's illustrations are inspired by the stories she heard from her father and uncle. The lyrical narrative and compelling paintings blend memory and myth in this bittersweet story of the boys' journey home one summer and the healing power of their culture.