Twelve-year-old Walter plans to spend the summer of 1927 watching his beloved Chicago Cubs play baseball. Instead, his life is upended when his mother is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Walter leaves his father and his friends to accompany his mother by train to Albuquerque, New Mexico?a place he has never been to live with relatives he has never met. To help with expenses, Walter gets a paper route. But the situation gets worse. His mother is admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium and needs expensive surgery. Walter wrecks his cousin' s bicycle, and they get into a fistfight. What else could go wrong? Walter has a chance encounter with the gangster, Al " Scarface" Capone. Walter reluctantly becomes his errand boy. When Walter learns Capone plans to pay for his mother' s surgery, he faces a difficult decision. Should he accept Capone' s help if his family will be indebted to a gangster?