For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall, North Carolina, means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is very protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them t to sop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's t supposed to -- an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess's. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's t prepared. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he w kws that this new understanding can bring both evil -- and the possibility of deliverance.