It's 1959 in the town of Clearwater, there are no cell phones or laptops, Eisenhower is President and the country is at peace. Or is it? Three seemingly aimless teenagers, Wellesley Baker, wise guy Taylor Clark, the story's narrator Will Bradford, and Laddie Tilford, the deaf-mute who watches the town from his bike, see a different world. It's a summer vacation from high school that ends in two ugly deaths and a climactic trial.