Hard to have heroes

Fourteen-year-old wannabe cowboy, Noah Odell and his widowed mother, leave Oregon to join Noah's Uncle Bud on a ranch near the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Between daily temperatures in excess of one hundred degrees, rattlesnakes, buzzards, coyotes, cattle, and an outdoor toilet overrun with black widow spiders, life is never dull. And then the Army tries to confiscate the ranch to expand the White Sands Missile Range.