Homer is the sole protector of his mother and his two younger siblings, Bess and Ulysses. He is a teenager whose only other sibling is at war in WWII. His father is dead. He works as a telegraph messenger and the novel begins with him at work. He is delivering a notice to a woman that her son has died at war, and we meet his boss, Mr. Sprangler.
At the local general store, he talks with Mr. Ara and Mr. Covington, an optimist and pessimist respectively. Ulysses helps Homer with groceries. Homer also attends school, but he is mostly concerned with his crush, a gal named Helen who is already dating someone else. There is a list of other townsfolks that he passes by and discusses, and a few outsiders that he doesn't know.
Mostly, the townsfolk talk about the war, and about the death of the young soldiers who are fighting abroad. The deceased father visits Homer's mother one night with two messages: the first is encouragement, and the second is a warning—Marcus, Homer's older brother, will die. Homer struggles to make sense of small-town life in the misery of death, and he struggles to do his job, delivering bad news to people in town.
One day, at work, Homer gets an instruction from Mr. Sprangler to deliver a telegraph to his own home. His older brother Marcus has died in combat. He brings the note to his mother, and they mourn the loss bitterly. The same day, though, Marcus's good friend, Tobey, comes home safely from war, and they accept him into their home as family.
