Eighteen year old Pierre Ruell has worked in the textile mills of Glen River, Vermont, for the past four years. It is 1898, and when he becomes aware that unless he leaves Glen River soon, his life will be spent in a cocoon of rattling looms for all time. Leaving there one day, his travels take him to the New York waterfront where he spends the next fifteen years in the prestigious position of General Dock Foreman. Unusual circumstances eventually bring him and his family to the small Massachusetts town of Northcross, and to his lifelong position there as head caretaker at the Sibley mansion. Emery Sibley owns the town, its five textile mills, its gigantic factory, and, to some extent, its people. Pierre's ten year old grandson, Davy Ruell, enters the story in 1943, in the midst of World War II Davy's young life revolves around the parish school, the church and convent where he serves as an altar boy, and his newspaper route, all of which tend to create for him a daily encounter with Father Blame, his vicious dog, as well as with the gloomy shadows surrounding Emery Sibley's eerie mansion. If it wasn't for Pamela Sibley.