For most of Ben's life, he has been a kid without a mom. He has his dad, who knows Ben doesn't like oatmeal and always hugs Ben before bed. And he has Sunshine, his loyal little dog, who is never far from his side. But his mom, who left when he was young, has just been a story, faint in his memory. Now he's about to spend a whole week with her on her remote island in the middle of the northern Minnesota wilderness. Though he's nervous about bears...

Thirteen-year-old Caitlin looks forward to the camping trip with her older sister in the woods of Northern Minnesota, but she doesn't count on the intrusion of her sister's boyfriend or the ghost of a boy who died in the fire that destroyed the forest a century before.