The book is told from the view of Jackson (Jack) Hurd, a twelve-year-old boy living with his parents on an organic farm when his family begins fostering fourteen-year-old Joseph Brook. Joseph's caseworker, Mrs. Stroud, informs the family that he recently spent a month incarcerated at a place called Stone Mountain for trying to kill his teacher while high on pills and also that he has a three-month-old daughter whom he has never met. Joseph arrives at the farm two days later and closes himself off to the Hurds. Later, the school bus driver hassles Joseph for having a child so young. He refuses to board the bus, and he and Jack instead walk to school in the cold. This becomes a daily ritual despite the frigid winter. At school, Joseph receives little sympathy, but is liked by a few of his teachers. One day, his biological father shows up at the farm without warning while Joseph is in counseling and demands to see him, but Mr. Hurd sends him away.

One day on their way to school, Joseph walks down to the Alliance River and steps onto the ice despite Jack's warnings and tries to break it. He briefly stops when Jack yells the name "Maddie", which he has heard Joseph say in his sleep, before giving up and walking back to Jack. However, he falls through the ice a few steps from the shore. Jack is able to pull him out and they return home. Jack later asks Joseph why he went onto the ice, to which he responds, "Maddie liked to skate." After the incident, Mr. Hurd orders them to start riding the bus again. On the bus, Jack is harassed by several other students who tell him Joseph got into a fight with Jay Perkins, another eighth-grader. Once the ice is thick enough, the family goes ice skating for the first time in the season. Joseph, in a moment of vulnerability, asks the Hurds to help him find his daughter and tells them the story of how she was born. When he was thirteen, Joseph fell in love with Madeleine Joyce, the young daughter of wealthy lawyers, whom he met when his plumber father had a job at their house. Joseph and Madeleine secretly spent the summer together before she went away to preparatory school. He visited her when she came home for Christmas break and she kissed him for the first time. The day before she was to leave again, Madeleine's nanny caught them sleeping together and her parents filed a restraining order against Joseph. Months later, Madeleine died from complications giving birth to their daughter Jupiter (named after their favorite planet), and Joseph was forced to sign away his parental rights under threat of prosecution from the Joyces. Shortly after this, he took unmarked yellow pills from a classmate and assaulted a teacher, for which he was sent to Stone Mountain.