In the spring of 1949 Warren Hearst can no longer play shortstop or ride his bike. The polio epidemic has claimed his body. Bundled in a blanket in the back of the family Chevy "Woody" station wagon, Warren rolls along Highway 30 toward Omaha and hospitalization. He will be a miserable "crip". He plans to run away. But the plan is dashed when he meets Whitey, that pushy little twerp across the street in the new, unfamiliar neighborhood. Out of the hospital, and sporting a leg brace and a crutch, Warren finds himself bumping along in Whitey's coaster wagon. Their destination is the old Woodard farm where a legendary, weathered tree house has been waiting to welcome yet another troubled child. The story begins when Warren and Whitey, life long friends and now in their sixties, are sitting face to face in a breakfast booth with sketchy plans drawn on a grease spotted placemat. It will be midnight when Whitey's pickup will bounce through the fields of the now deserted Woodard farm. The tree house will be dismantled and rebuilt in an old tree in Warren's back yard. Another special child will climb the ladder, because the planet Venus will be positioned just right in the glowing sunset of the western sky.
