As a young girl and her mother watch the flocks of black birds preparing for their journey south, the mother dreams of returning to Costa Rica where she was born.
In New Orleans in 1898, while her mother talks of saving to buy land and her father insists on the importance of an education, young Irish immigrant Maggie McCrary is determined to find her own way in the new place they call home.
When a bolt of lightning provides twelve-year-old Calvin with an out-of-body experience, he meets the spirit of the father he never knew and brings a troubled ghost named Rory back to the living world with him--only to see Rory threaten his chances of pitching in a baseball game.
When fourteen-year-old Fischer accidentally uses a magic stone to summon Thistle, one of its Keepers and an agent of the Light, he must help her fight the evil Belial, who seeks to rule the world with cruel Darkness.
