Eleven-year-old Ian and his father, a Vietnam veteran, have been homeless for the past several years, living most recently in an abandoned railway station until his father found the perfect place for them - the vast, now unused, old city courthouse. As a historic monument, it is kept heated; it has lots of bathrooms; it has a variety of exits and entrances. Then Ian's father fails to return one night and Ian discovers that a local museum is going to put on a six-week exhibit of kites from around the world. Ian's precarious survival on his own, following all the precautions his father has taught him, makes absorbing reading in this highly unusual, realistic story of a closely-knit, remarkably independent father and son.
