Lucky is a young red squirrel who was rescued from a hawk, and now must somehow make his home among the Cloudfoot clan of the larger, gray squirrels who live in the city park--and trouble is brewing for the rival gray squirrels known as the Northenders are planning an invasion.

While his corvid buddies spend their days cracking jokes at the dump, raven Otto P. Nudd invents things with his human neighbor Old Man Bartleby, but when one of Bartleby's contraptions puts him in danger, Otto must join forces with kids and critters to save the Old Man.

"Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, [this novel examines] the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the...