Fourteen-year-old Charlie Churchill knows that he must put his childish stories behind him and be the man of the house, where his gossip-loving mother and adventurous young cousin in Fall River, Massachusetts, need him. But on the morning of August 4, 1892, Charlie witnesses a horrific act at his next-door neighbors' house, the Bordens, that he can't keep to himself. No one believes that Charlie saw one of the Bordens be attacked on the second floor of the house, not even when Andrew and Abby Borden are found dead later that morning. Charlie is determined to use what he witnessed to help the police find the murderer, from spying a mysterious figure burying something in the woods in the middle of the night to the whispers he overhears from the Borden sisters and staff. Even if it means having to face the prime suspect, his enigmatic neighbor Lizzie Borden, accused of killing her own father and stepmother.