In a near-empty Northfork orphanage, Father Harlan gently tends to Irwin, a eight-year-old who lies between a dreamstate and death. As orphanage caretaker Harlan reads aloud about Northfork's years-ago forced evacuation to make way for a hydro-electric dam, Irwin's imagination takes flight. While a team of six men evacuate the last remaining citizens of the town, Irwin, too, invents a cast of characters to prepare himself for his own evacuation.