Enoch Wallace has a strange job. He is the keeper of a galactic Way Station located near La Crosse, WI. He was offered the job shortly after he fought in the Civil War and has not noticeably aged in the 80 some years that have passed. His neighbors think of him as something of an oddity but the local culture is very private. The book opens as someone in the federal government has noticed him as an oddity. They have him under surveillance but they are keeping something of a distance.
Enoch loves his job and he has worked very hard over the decades to understand extraterrestrial cultures, science and math. He has even made friends with some of the aliens that have passed through his station. Frankly, I kind of envy his job.
There is a crisis of course, as all plots depend on conflict to drive them. This was the weakest part of the book. It seemed like Simak thought up an interesting situation and then shoehorned a problem into the story to make it go somewhere. In other words, it was good and interesting but not great.
This was easily the hardest book of the Hugo project to get my hands on so far. I had to find it in the library system. The copy I had was part of a special limited reprinting. There were five copies in the Hennepin county system but none at the used bookstores or (cheaply) online. Amazon wanted more than $40 for a used copy. (I don't know what that has to do with anything but I found it interesting.)
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