Camp Cory director for many years, facing a new season with additional staff, including a newly appointed business manager also acting as a senior counselor who holds differing views as to how the camp should be managed, Henry Carter finds that the changes in staff along with a significant increase in camp inhabitants from different ethnic, social, and economic background soon begin challenging his direction of the camp and ordering its program of activities.

One particular challenge Carter faces is Solomon, a boy sent to camp for the summer to help him recover from his loss of a brother. Solomon along with Phil, Andy, Stricklin, Hansen, and Herman, all from the same small town and attending camp for the first time, soon meet boys such as Mick and Pudge and Jessie and Warren who are very different in attitudes, manners, and experiences from their own