Itchy Donner

Itchy Donner doesn't have much going for him. A rashy eleven-year-old growing up fatherless in a dying backwoods Idaho timber town, Itchy is obsessed with the past--specifically, his family's past. Itchy's the great-great-great grandson of Tamsen Donner, the Donner Party's famous matriarch, and Itchy studies his ancestor's history with the relentlessness that only a true nerd can muster. He and his mother Irene live poor but happy in a ramshackle singlewide, and Irene encourages Itchy's interest and pride in his illustrious ancestors. But their predictable lives are forever turned upside-down when the wandering gyppo logger Red Donner--Itchy's blustery, larger-than-life father--blows back into town looking to make amends for his past and put his family back together again.