Seven-year-old Matthew disappears one day on a walk into Horshoe, a dust bowl farm town in Depression-era Saskatchewan. Robert, his older brother, is determined to find Matthew, even when the grownups seem to give up. Other children go missing just as a strange man named Abram Harsich appears in town. He dazzles the townspeople, long plagued by the effects of drought, with magic mirrors and the promises of a rainmaking machine. Only Robert seems to be able to resist Abram, and to discover what happened to Matthew.