Shy wise-acre Jamie Garrath goes to work at his father's sawmill specifically to be with him. But Ned Custis, a strangely quiet boy he barely knows from school, throws a wrench in Jamie's plans when he invades for the summer to work at the mill, too. Jamie feels his idyllic vision of working with his father slipping away. Work at the mill is hot and brutal, Jamie's father is too busy to spend time with him and a vicious mill worker tries to kill Toby, his dog. And as if all this trouble wasn't enough, Jamie meets Deidre, the daughter of an Irish migrant worker, and falls head-over-heels in love. Ned's not exactly jumping for joy either. His father pawned him off on the Garraths to get him out from underfoot in the family hardware store. He's in exile in a strange place he doesn't want to be, doing things he doesn't want to do and his work at the mill turns out to be tree scouting in the deep woods with Cyrus, an enigmatic Indian and ex-shaman, who he's afraid will butcher him with a bush axe. It's going to be a stressful summer for both of them. As the only two boys in the company of hard working men, Jamie and Ned are driven together for better or for worse, forced to forge a friendship. They form a club of two - or three if you include Toby the dog.