Mike is 16 ½ years old and lives with his insufferable mother Cynthia in Faintville, a logging town deep in the Canadian woods that has stood still in time. Mike dreams of being dead, because his life clearly has more disadvantages than advantages. Consequently, on the eve of the first day of the new school year, he shoots himself in the head with his missing German father’s old hunting rifle.

To his great disappointment, however, he wakes up the next day not in heaven as planned, but in a shared room in a municipal hospital. But the good news follows immediately. During a routine examination of his brain, a tumor the size of a plum is found in his head. Mike can hardly believe his luck and hides the illness from those around him in order to avoid the life-saving operation.

With his certain death in his hands, Mike’s view of his life changes. He learns what joy is and what sadness is and meets Miranda, a girl with whom you can steal wood and bury deer. He realizes that even parents are only human and that life has some good sides as well as the bad.