This story opens in 1961 and, right away, the reader discovers that peace and violence, beauty and evil, can co-exist in the same place, casting a contradiction into every story. Mike appears to be a sweet and innocent three-year-old boy but, at his core, is an unfathomable wickedness, with his younger brother, Jerry, squarely in his sights. Follow the family through years of tribulation as they are beset with one catastrophe after another.