With trembling hands and shattered nerves, Elijah Taber, the alter-ego of the author, returns from infantry combat in Europe having escaped death by a miracle. He finds solace among his relations in Lost River Bridge, an isolated community in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Expecting to visit for two weeks, he spends the entire summer of 1946, finding himself rejuvenated and ready to face his future. He returns to Canada, completes his engineering degree and has a successful career as a construction manager. Forty-two years after his first visit, offering no reason for his choice, he returns to the place that cured him from the mental anguish of his war experience to find a dying community, until at last he is the only living soul remaining in Lost River Bridge. He reflects on his situation ... "In the cool crisp evening under a starlit sky, depressed and lonely, my world had come undone. Five years ago, I came back to Lost River Bridge to fill the vacuum in my soul, and now even that moment of pleasure in the twilight of my life was being wrenched from my heart." In desperation before he must depart, he solves a mystery, donates the family heirloom to the next generation who reveal their ambition to rejuvenate the community and relates to them the ... "LEGEND OF THE FOUNDING OF LOST RIVER BRIDGE."