The morning of his eighteen birthday Westinghouse Patent Pend. Ainstruther hears his Ma say, "Wes, break a leg." He realizes it is carnie talk telling him to leave the desolate homestead to go out in the world to make his fortune and send it back, that the other eight kid's ration of corn meal mush and goat's milk not be permanently interrupted. Unschooled he is well read from his Uncle Abernathy, an English Remittance Man's, library. He is then a Victorian minded American youth dropped into the bucolic glitz of San Diego, CA of the Thirties. His first acquaintance is Alyse, rambunctious daughter of an oil tycoon. Smitten she offers to help his quest but her mind is more on long white dresses and bridal bouquets. At Alyse's admission of her love of antiques they mine the defunct Ensenada Hotel, once a posh beanery, of its furnishings as items to sell on Antique Row in San Diego. They are astonished to find in the various armoires exotic birds and reptiles being smuggled in for the San Diego Zoo, and finally a defunct Mafia gunman. They over come to make it, in Wes' own words, "A typical American Horatio Aglae (sic) Success story."