Every spring, hundreds of tree planters migrate north to remote bush camps. Some are drawn to the fast cash, some by the scenery, and some are on the run. Rusticated from university for protesting the felling of the campus arboretum for a parking lot, sick of the noise of urban life, greenhorn Noah Abramson flees Toronto in search of a quiet place where he can become a man on his own terms. But the camp has attracted other fugitives. At first, their mutual struggle to survive the season binds them but as spring stretches into summer, and fever and fire close on the camp, their pasts catch up with them, and some scores must be settled.