When fourteen-year-old Derek Taylor and his sister Penny are dragged out into the wilderness by their environmentalist parents, they soon discover that the 'simple life' is really not so simple. And the idea that there would be less crime is negated when Derek and another boy trip an alarm at a marijuana grow-op and, in running away, fall into an empty grave.

Derek is catapulted into the investigation of the murder of an undercover cop, which threatens to put his life, and that of his sister, in danger. And that is not the only crime being played out in the lonely mountain valley.