For fourteen-year-old Josh, the village of Ryan Creek, settled by his great-grandfather, is a jungle--completely different from Melbourne, where he was born and raised. And the people he meets in Ryan Creek--his eccentric Aunt Clara, the two O'Connor boys and their beautiful sister Betsy, Laura and Harry Jones--are not only baffling but dangerous. Josh does everything wrong here. A dreamer and a poet, he is also strong-willed and uncompromising in his principles. His encounters with the young people of Ryan Creek during his three-day visit begin with mutual bewilderment and confusion and move inexorably to an explosion of violence.