When 14-year-old Jack reaches his new home in the country, where not a single skyscraper can be seen, he fears he'll go insane. Dad has some strange ideas about life since Mom died. He's convinced they'll be better off repairing an abandoned farm near a ghost town that no longer appears on any maps-Deville Falls.

The hard work and lack of reliable Internet and cell service is bad enough. What's worse are the constant threats coming from all around him. While Dad stays clueless, Jack is haunted by natural phenomena that rise from the land itself-a howl that keeps him up nights, a swarm of goat-thieving bats, a valley that steals time, and more.

While friends are hard to find, he's saved from a ravenous monster by two mysterious motocross riders he calls the Devil sisters. They take him to their antique mansion to meet their grandmother, who announces there's a curse on the land which killed the town off more than a century ago and left their family in an 1800s time bubble. Worse, Madame Deville expects Jack to take on the many monstrous elements that haunt the land.

When will his mission end? Maybe when he finds the strength to complete all of the curse-reversing tasks in the old lady's book. But he knows any one of those adventures could kill him or trap him in the depths of the stricken land never to be seen again.