Book is in French Yannick and his two best friends leave their rural Ontario for Newfoundland. They are expected by an aunt to begin the renovation work on an old house intended to become an inn. Fleeing his difficult family life, Yannick accepted this temporary exile which allows him to realize a dream he has cherished for a long time: traveling. One rainy day, the young people discover signs of a prisoner in the attic. Then emerges Otis, the ugly boy, ostracized by his family and his community almost two hundred years earlier.