Vacationing on a farm in West Virginia near the haunted glass factory where crazy old Irwin Loop used to make marbles, eleven-year-old Jenna decides to use the place to shock her mute younger brother into talking.
When he is wrongly accused of gravely injuring his baby half-sister, Nikki, thirteen-year-old Branwell loses his power of speech, and only his friend Connor is able to reach him and uncover the truth about what really happened.
Young Tug Dockery witnesses a brutal act by his grandfather that leaves him unable to speak, so when his parents die, Tug's beloved older brother feels compelled to escape from a hellish labor camp to rescue him from their grandfather's Florida cattle ranch.