Two young Russians, caught by the winds of ideology, row their boat down the Volga River to take in the heartland of Russia in 1939, more than twenty years after the Revolution. A teenager and his young brother are the first two humans to be born on Mars, the only two still alive. A successful graphic designer in Kansas City abandons wife and child for two weeks to hike the hills of northeast Kansas in mid-December. He hopes to sort his own thoughts and cope with life. He meets a homeschooled boy who reads Plato and Pascal and tells him the road he hikes leads to a small town whose sole tourist attraction is the largest ball of twine in the country. Finding refuge from a sudden blizzard, he meets other plain country folk who have their own unusual stories.
