Ellen Theodora Madigan sees past events in her dreams and has the smarts to solve the mysteries they hint at. At age fifteen, she moves to Rangeley, Maine after spending much of her life living near her dad's archaeological dig sites in other countries. She and her family spend her dad's sabbatical year at her grandparents' lake house. She befriends a loner girl at school, starts having dreams about the first inhabitants of the area, Abenaki Native Americans, and keeps encountering loons that she feels are trying to communicate. With the help of her first boyfriend, she solves the three mysteries: Why is the girl so alone? What are the dreams and the loons telling her? and Why did the Abenaki leave?