Jake Breaker, now a neurosurgeon, recounts his past when he and a small group of kids, under the leadership of his eccentric uncle, spend one summer investigating the validity of local ghost stories and macabre urban myths in 1980s Niagara Falls, a.k.a. Cataract City--a slightly seedy, slightly magical, slightly haunted place, where seemingly ordinary lives are steeped in secrets, desires, troubled histories, and the occasional splash of mayhem.