A teenage boy falls in love with an "upper-class" girl and gets to know his estranged grandfather in one heartbreaking summer which climaxes in a shattering search for Nazi war criminals.

When his older brother suddenly joins the army and is sent to the Persian Gulf, sixteen-year-old Gary begins to take a new look at the restaurant that has been the focal point of his family and their small Pennsylvania town.

Edgar Tobbit meets Neal Kraft at a group session arranged by their psychotherapist and their friendship ends up thwarting the plans of an eccentric widow to get revenge on the town where she was mistreated as a young girl.