Three-and-a-half-year-old Michael Murphy is a pain in the ass. He sure shouldn't be invited to any more weddings; last one he kicked the man his mother married in the shins. All he does is piss and moan, and he won't eat anything his mother cooks. For the life of him, he can't understand why his new grandmother would try to smother him with a pillow. Through it all, Michael is a fighter - he survives malnutrition and double pneumonia before his first day at a one-room schoolhouse on the Pinch in late 1950s Newfoundland. Then there's a baseball bat, a hammer, a hatchet, some inconvenient fresh cow patties, a binge-drinking father and an ever-pregnant mother... The hard-place boy faces the same choice day after day: to buckle down and become a positive help to his family, or continue down a devilishly contrarian and obstructive path.