Walt Whitman is a celebrated American poet, essayist, and journalist who is well worth writing about. In this particular story, however, his role is a minor one. He is a suitor of the protagonist's sister. Given that Whitman was homosexual, as was Jack Crabb's sister, it was a match clearly going nowhere.

The significant character in this epic story is Crabb himself. Crabb lives among Native Americans, and when he is ten, most of his family is killed by Native Americans. This story of his life, told when he is over 121 years old and living in a nursing home, tells stories of great adventure and of a life lived between two cultures, never truly fitting into one or the other.

Jack knows plenty of heartache in his life, with his white wife and child being stolen by Native Americans and killed and his Cheyenne wife and newborn son meeting the same fate. Jack himself has many close brushes with death, being shot on at least four occasions.

While the "romance" between Crabb's sister and Whitman is clearly doomed due to their mutual homosexuality, homosexuality is not one of the themes of this picaresque novel, and it forms a small part of the plot. The major themes include being an alienated outsider and the struggle between white culture and Native American culture.