Sixteen-year-old honors student Ernest Benoit has always followed the rules. But when his best friend drowns on Cape Cod, he begins to question his family's devout Catholicism, and he disrupts an Advent prayer service at his Catholic high school. Now his life will never be the same.
A blizzard leaves Ernest stranded in a depressed western Massachusetts mill town after he boards a bus to Manhattan to avoid being sent to a Jesuit boarding school. It's the beginning of a months-long journey that leads him to rescue a young girl from an icy river, into the bed of a lonely middle-aged widow, and to the woodland cabin of Roland Lalibert, a recluse who can shoot with the accuracy of a sniper.
When the widow falsely accuses Ernest of rape, Roland smuggles him over the Canadian border where they settle into life on the New Brunswick farm where Roland grew up. Ernest takes a job in the Laliberts' sawmill, and falls in love with the girl next door. But it's not long before the local police start asking questions and his return home seems impossible.