Gene Carter, a bone-thin farm boy with glasses and a homemade wooden leg, almost gets killed on his sixteenth birthday by someone shooting at him with an elephant gun, no less. He discovers workers have been disappearing from the Salinas Valley without a trace and he sets out to find out why. He falls in love, smitten beyond his wildest dreams by a spirited waitress, field worker and college student named Rita. He accidentally learns deadly nightshade,...