Ryan is a fourteen year-old boy who lives alone in a treehouse, deep in the woods of New Hampshire. His father is gone and his mother is dead. He does his best to remain unnoticed by the townspeople, in fear of being taken away by the state. He attends school in order to get a free meal each day, and learns to balance friendship as he understands it, with self-preservation. He struggles with hunger, abandonment, ridicule, trust, and death, all while secretly trying to keep warm and fed as the cold weather closes in on his home. One boy alone in the world - looking for a way out of despair - potentially finding it from a most unlikely source.
