On a beautiful morning out in the meadow, Nipper Mooney experiences both the phenomenon of lost time and the death of his father. Soon he is sent to All Angels, a rigid Catholic school where Nipper, a sensitive and inquisitive boy, only finds more questions. He survives this claustrophobic and often violent world by becoming a reader, a dreamer, and developing a scrappy toughness, as he journeys through the beauties and horrors of childhood.