Young Buck – Summary
The back drop is 1920’s Chicago in a dingy apartment which is barely paid for on a weekly basis by a husband and father who manages to find odd jobs to pay rent, barely enough food for the family to survive and his smuggled bottles of whiskey he down to maintain his form of sanity. Jesse hears his mom cry out beyond the door he was forbidden to go through by his father who is busy ignoring the cries and downing another one of his bottles. The crying stops as a new voice carries on the same tune. His new sister has come into this world but her price for entry is her mother’s life. Jesse is forced from the apartment to fend for himself in the dirty world of the post-industrial age. A stranger he meets along his journey tells him to go west where there is work for young boys on farms and helps to smuggle him on a train.
Jesse finds himself in a world of open spaces and finds a family to work for his room and board. The Wallace’s are friendly enough folk and have the added bonus of a young girl about Jess’s age, Sue-Ellen, as well as two younger daughters Dorothy and Marjory. Jesse finds his knees wobbly and his voice hard to find when she is near showing his affection for her, which will only land him in trouble.
Through some twists and turns of his difficult youth he soon finds himself to be a stoic young man that must make his way in the world where affection has only ever turned its back on him. He does the best he can with what he is given and makes a living with people as necessity to further his life, but not necessity to be in his life. After a youth of affection turning its back on him and an adult life of turning his back on affection, he finally tries to seek redemption in the last of his days.