A BOOK OF DAYS is the story of a book, The Journal of Thomas Keating—the days when it was written, and the subsequent days when it changed the lives of those who touched it. We first see the book as a plaything for two children on a Western Pennsylvania iron plantation in the early 1800s, who use the ancient language of the book in their games of sexual awakening. We see the book in the same location in 1776, when a young woman brings the book written in Gaelic to a survivor of a massacre that occurred here, to help her understand the fate of her mother. And we see, at the heart of the novel, the writer of the book, an ensign of the Black Watch, as he seeks refuge in a blockhouse he fears is surrounded by Indians, recounting his journey upriver with a band of misfits to discover the fate of the outpost's lost command.