With the collapse of the government after the Second World War, Americans have learned to live without help or interference from police, lawyers and bureaucrats. In this simple and happy world lives an eleven-year-old boy who wants to be a scientist. He finds a plant that can produce uranium which he and his friends set about to put to good use. The plant mysteriously disappears without a trace until the young scientist and his friends discover a secret operation run by desperate men. The boys' discovery leads them to a murder and a kidnapping. What will the little town of Vancouver, Washington, with no police, no court and no jail, do with a crime of this magnitude? Can they cope with the crisis this miraculous bush brings on? The missing item eventually turns up in the most unlikely of places, but in the end they discover that the real wonder isn't the plant.