This is a story about a girl, born at the beginning of the 20th century. She grows up in a small river town in upstate New York. One day the mysterious Charles Varnay, an eccentric who dresses in the style of an 18th century dandy, comes to town, his sole companion a remarkably intelligent dog-named Rousseau. Varnay wants to star Katherine in a movie serial he plans to make, called The Goddess of Enlightenment. Katherine is rather put off when she...

Two interlinked story arcs follow a couple of quirky adolescent boys whose eccentricities make school more interesting for everyone else around them.

Wendell is a high school outcast who lives a lonely, suburban existence, losing himself in books in order to avoid his distant, motorcycle-riding stepfather, Ted. When the school bullies convince Wendell to venture into the forest around their neighborhood and explore the long-abandoned Renaissance Faire grounds they all believe to be haunted, Wendell is surprised to find a man living in the barn - and even more surprised by the man himself. His new...