In a town that values red hair above all else, someone threatens to expose pageant contestant Felicity's secret about her coppery locks.

A new forest ranger, eager to prove himself, installs an outhouse for animals so that the forest will be tidier but although the animals enter, one after another, and claim success, none can figure out a way to actually make use of the unnatural device.

Sixteen-year-old Mackie Doyle knows that he replaced a human child when he was just an infant, and when a friend's sister disappears he goes against his family's and town's deliberate denial of the problem to confront the beings that dwell under the town, tampering with human lives.

"On the island of Here, livin's easy. Conduct is orderly. Lawns are neat. Citizens are clean shaven--and Dave is the most fastidious of them all. Dave is bald, but for a single hair. He loves drawing, his desk job, and the Bangles. But on one fateful day, his life is upended...by an unstoppable (yet pretty impressive) beard."--Back cover.