Fourteen-year-old Dowty Ritter, an orphan, escapes the confines of the Sioux City, Iowa, orphanage he has lived in since his father's death three years earlier. Heading for Des Moines, with hopes of joining the army, Dowty is stopped by the law, his plans are thwarted, and he, instead, ends up in the boys' correctional facility in Eldora, Iowa. At Eldora, Dowty makes friends and enemies, and finds out that the pseudo-military school is far more penal than its name, the Iowa Industrial School, implies. From the beginning of his stay at Eldora, Dowty experiences problems with the headmaster of Cottage Four, a cantankerous bully that abuses the power he holds over the boys in his care. Dowty works in sweat-shop type conditions, and faces daily beatings after he and his friends are turned in for a possible escape plan. The camaraderie of friendship makes life at Eldora bearable, especially because Dowty and his closest friends, Carl Hoffman (a long-time resident) and Skinny Petersen (a twenty-two-year-old at Eldora in order to avoid jail time) share a supreme desire to escape the abuse at the school. One boy dies, others suffer extreme harm; a derailed escape ends in a riot that results in the overthrow of the existing administration, and through everything, Dowty tries to remember and remain true to his father's teachings.