Jason Stevens is an angry 15-year-old when his parents decide to move from Toronto to Lucan, Ontario, site of the notorious 1880 massacre of the Irish-Canadian Donnelly family. In the big city, Jason’s spate of petty thievery earned him a sentence of community service under the tutelege of his grandfather, an eccentric retired school teacher, who is building a museum devoted to the history of Lucan.

Now even unhappier than he was in Toronto, Jason falls in with a gang of youth called the White Boys, who are involved with the local drug trade and who are terrorizing the neighbourhood, much as the Donnellys were once accused of doing.

While performing his community service, Jason finds himself becoming enthralled with the Donnelly story. With the help of a ghost of someone who may have had something to do with the butchery of the Donnellys, Jason searches for answers both in history and in his own life.