Thirteen-year-old Spencer Dray, an intelligent, well-read, home-schooled boy already offered scholarships by prestigious colleges, is delighted when he and his parents move from their rented West Oakland, California bungalow to their very own home in the Oakland hills, a forested, storybook-like setting where deer, foxes and coyotes still roam, and with a pond to swim in; though it’s only a little stone cottage, former residence for the grounds-keeper of a huge estate. The lavish mansion upon the estate, once home to the Shade family, has been deserted since 1926, when Gilbert Grosvenor Shade, the last of the Shades, passed-away. As with most abandoned mansions, there are rumors of it being haunted. There are also dark hints that the family line ended under sinister circumstances following the death by drowning of Gilbert’s fifteen-year-old son, Gavin, in the cottage’s pond, and Gilbert’s possible suicide shortly after due to grief. But, while Spencer’s first night in the cottage seems to be heralded by a haunting, it appears instead he’s found a new friend, a mischievous, somewhat scruffy boy named Dodger, who exhibits many traits of Charles Dickens’ Artful. In company with Dodger, Spencer embarks upon nightly adventures, hopping freight trains, meeting more new friends in which some might call the wrong side of the tracks, and eventually discovers what really happened to the Shades.