Cody and Colonel--two untamed (and unsupervised) youths growing up in a town called Pink. With no great river to explore, the boys take to the skies, having reckless adventures in Baling Wire, the self-built airplane of Codys Pa. By chance, Colonel is drawn under the auspices of Charles Kickapoo, an Indian architect recently returned to finish a house in the woods north of Pink--his seminal work, a spiraling whim of a house, started decades ago but abandoned (or so he believes). On Colonel's journey of apprenticeship, he must struggle to maintain his boyhood love of the wild blue yonder while dutifully nurturing hidden artistic abilities, marked by a life-altering coincidence between his own folk architecture and Kickapoo's unbuilt house.