Science whiz Charlie Parker has more than a few unusual problems. As if his home life weren’t bad enough—what with his crazy ghost-spotting uncle, his dad’s emotional absence since the disappearance of Fortune Parker, Charlie’s mother, and the homeless drifter who lives in the family barn—in the early morning hours of Charlie’s thirteenth birthday, he is chased by dark, fiery-eyed apparitions; gets soaked to the bone hiding in a hollowed-out log; and has a hallucination of a floating hand that writes flaming symbols in mid-air. And that’s all before he makes it to the bus stop.

As soon as he arrives at school, he's ambushed by bully Damian C. Monev's gang, and then, due to a chain of inexplicable bad luck, spooky Principal Derwin Yulumbago gives him the choice of being expelled or undergoing the mysterious FYI Infusion Procedure Charlie has seen make zombies out of other students.  

With the help of a ragtag gaggle of friends—including beautiful, eerie rich girl, Aldercy Edlyn—Charlie escapes Principal Yulumbago, mad scientist Dr. Osculum Fian, and other nefarious public-school officials.  Hopping a ride on an otherworldly riverboat captained by three-eyed Gollargus Thudbutt, Charlie finds himself whisked off to WASGAD's Academy for Youngsters, where he learns he might have the same angel genetics as his quirky Uncle Oph.  Menace mixes with mystery as Charlie and his new WASGAD Academy friends unwrap clues revealing that even small towns such as his may often harbor great evil . . . and that the villain they ultimately entrap is a mere speck on the map of all the evil that lurks in wait of them.

Along the way, Charlie must come to terms with why he lost his mother (Miss Fortune herself); hear the truth about his father's secretive past as a swashbuckling adventurer; learn his Uncle Oph is an angel in hillbilly disguise who harbors the ghost of a long dead prophet in a Mason jar; discover the pigs outside his bedroom window can talk in Morse Code; and that the insane hobo Daren who hides out in the barn is immortal. Above all, Charlie discovers the power of belief and the possibility of miracles.  He learns there is a reality more real than anything the eyes can see or science can prove—and that his supernatural adventures are just beginning.