Hank tells the story of his first thirty years beginning in a small northern Vermont town to seminary study, his service in the US Army in the Vietnam War era, and work on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC during the Watergate scandal. His laborer father and homemaker mother taught him and his twelve siblings the value of hard work by living off the land and raising their own food and animals. His faith in institutions was shaken in early adulthood through awareness of the deceptions by government and the failure of his church to teach the ways of loving nonviolence.