13-year-old Mike Saunders, African-American and raised by his novel-writing dad in the nice suburban environment of Thousand Oaks, California, is dismayed when his father's uncertain income forces a move to a tumbledown shack in the desolate sweltering desert of Coyote Valley, Arizona. The property, such as it is -- electricity unreliable, and only a windmill for water -- was left to Mike's dad by Mike's great-uncle, who died at the age of 107 after spending most of his life searching for a ton of gold bars stolen in a train robbery in 1897 and reputedly still buried somewhere. Except for its rusty narrow-gauge track, the Coyote Valley And Codyville railroad, abandoned since 1917, has almost been forgotten. But Mike, though having an interest in real steam trains, is more concerned upon his arrival to find that the only potential friends within twenty miles are Carson, 12, a smart-ass "gamer," and Little Coyote, 13, an enormously fat Apache boy who lives in a shack no better than Mike's at what had once been a water stop on the abandoned railroad. Mike isn't sure he wants to befriend either one, but as the story unfolds, revealing desert legend and lore, crusty old wild west characters, an adventure in an abandoned mine, a steam locomotive resurrected, and an encounter with gun-toting ghosts, Mike learns that true friends come in all colors and sizes, and souls aren't judged by BMI or how much wealth one accumulates while breathing the air of this earth.