Starting with something as simple as a boy who wants a dog, this book takes us into a richly intimate world where everything that matters to him is at risk: family, nature, home. At the outset 10-year-old Jim and his Canadian mother and American father are on a journey from New York City to a lake in eastern Ontario during the last hot days of August. What unfolds is a completely enveloping story that spans a few pivotal years of his youth. Set in the mid-1990s, when Quebec is on the verge of leaving Canada, this captivating novel is an unconventional coming of age story.