Cally Cummins is a young girl about to be out of school for summer break. The Florida sunshine is heating up and so is the adventure coming Cally's way as she and her brother Bud, through unusual circumstances meet a mysterious young boy, Jesse Tate. Jesse is poor and lives with his mother and the mean town drunk, Jasper Tate. The Cummins family extends a generous offer to help Jesse, which leads to a lasting friendship, but also the unraveling of long buried secrets surrounding the boys past. One stormy afternoon as Cally and Jesse are digging inside the opening of a stump in Seminole Woods looking for fishing worms, they discover a tin filled with mysterious contents, one of which is a locket with pictures of twin boys inside looking amazingly like Jesse. Seminole Landing, being a haven for spiritualists and mediums spark the kids overactive imaginations, especially after confiding in Cally's friend Connie Louise Parker. Connie Louise suggests they pay a visit to her grandmother's personal medium, Madame Rosemary, to see if she can help them find Jesse's connection to the locket. Their quest to find out about the locket leads them to learn dangerous secrets. As the secrets unfold so do other people from Jesse's past such as Little Deer, a Seminole woman living in the swamp, and an uncle Jesse has never known. Cally, Jesse and Connie realize they are in way over their heads after witnessing the materialization of some of Seminole Landing's spirits, as they dabble in things better left to the mediums of the landing. Through it all Jesse learns the truth of his past, and the evil that has been residing in this strange place; secrets once hidden, but now revealing themselves, spewing out like the crystal clear waters that come bubbling from the sandy bottoms of the Landing river's springs.