It happened to his older brother, and now it's happening to Stephen. Night after night, he has the same nightmare--a baby crying in a treetop, a remarkable tree house threatened by fire from below. His distraught mother calls in Hesketh Martin. A witch, Stephen calls her. A practitioner of "applied kinesiology," his mother insists. But weird potions can't cure Stephen. Nor could psychiatrists heal his brother, Marcus, who left the family four years before, shortly after their father left. Now fifteen himself, the same age Marcus was when he ran away, Stephen is determined to unlock the meaning of his bad dreams and uncover the story of his own childhood. With characteristic wit and perception, Tim Wynne-Jones has crafted a masterful novel that has much to say about memory, family secrets, and the transforming power of truth.