Ishmael's recollections are given in his own words. The biographer's comments appear in italics and in verse.

The author spent two weeks in Utah's high country, discussing one man, Bert Johnson, from the viewpoint of his grown son, thinking back on his childhood memories of Dad in those places where they were made. The result is this heartfelt memoir of fatherhood from a man who has come to know the burdens of fatherhood and the awakening of grandfatherhood, and who agreed to speak of his father from a child's wonder-lit view of life.