Following the death of his unlovable uncle Fred in the early 1990's, high-school junior Steve Smith is forced to move with his family to the exurban community of McDowell Mills, Georgia - a place where the march of progress stopped around the same time as Sherman's March. Stuck in a new school where he must figure out how to fit in, Steve meets and becomes friends with a group of honor students who share a unique pastime: they meet a local park beside a church graveyard to watch the ghosts who inhabit it.

Until Steve's arrival, their visits were uneventful - but one mysterious ghost, who has piqued the group's attention for as long as they have been meeting there, recognizes Steve's resemblance to his dead uncle, and her reaction to him takes them all by surprise.

As Steve and his new friends struggle to unravel the ghost's identity, Steve begins to understand his uncle - who had been the most disliked man in McDowell Mills - in a way he never did before...