Andy Brown loses his parents at 2, and is abandoned by his drug addicted aunt at 6. Somehow, he survives and even attends school. He is helped by many kind people, but also encounters extreme prejudice and cruelty. Andy gathers food from the forest as well as from rubbish bins. His classmates and teachers help feed him. He finds discarded clothes in the bins, washing and ironing them with equipment two centuries out of date. Andy has few material belongings, but does have some immaterial things like imagination and courage. At eleven, he finds a surrogate parent, and dreams of being adopted and sleeping in a real bed. Then Andy falls foul of a depraved paedophile who unintentionally feeds him a fatal cocktail of drugs.
Everyone was devastated by Andy’s death. Even the depraved and terrified criminal responsible for his death was sad as he buried the little boy in the forest. Many at the school cried openly and the others felt like crying. Andy sheds a few tears for himself as he contemplates the experiences he had been deprived of by his foul, strange and most unnatural murder. Andy sets off through the deep forest to find the only man who might be able to look at a ghost without going into hysterics.
Andy is brutalized and shot in the back by people who are legally untouchable.
Andy is one of the slowest runners in his school, but as the only one in his age group, he’s entered in the orienteering race in the forest. A blizzard comes up unexpectedly, and the race is called off. Bruce is missing. The small ad hoc group of adults, children and animals are cut off from outside aid and use their different talents to try to rescue Bruce from both the blizzard and the gunmen who want him dead.
Two little boys and a big dog, dressed as The Phantom, Deadpool and The Hound of the Baskervilles, are trick or treating. A little girl is missing and the three try to find her. Andy and the little girl find themselves in deadly danger.
A pleasant trip to the beach turns into horror as the bus load of students is trapped by a forest fire. They escape the fire, only to find themselves in another type of trap, facing a more lingering death. In attempting to get help, Andy is badly cut and is bleeding to death. He uses his last strength to phone for help. The emergency operator thinks it’s a hoax and hangs up.
Andy is kidnapped by mistake by a very powerful man with little grasp of reality, but access to deadly weapons.
A much bigger boy starts a fight with Andy. When Andy meets the boy's father, he is filled with fear and loathing completely out of proportion to the situation. What is the terrible connection between Andy and his rival's father? Andy gets suspected of murder and dodges bullets by jumping over a cliff.