At eight years old, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Cameron Waugh endures a relationship- altering beating at the hands of his father, Murray Waugh. Out of shame and fear, Murray takes Cam to stay with his extended family in Owen Sound until Cam’s bruising subsides. The beating prompts Cam’s mother Anita to force Murray out of the house. Cam, his, and younger twin sisters, Karen and Corinne, all feel the relief that emerges from Murray’s absence.

Now, with a single mother now supporting four people alone, Cam has too much time, freedom, and anger to fuel a delinquent friendship with another fatherless boy in the neighborhood, Jimmy Weight. Together, they test the laws – civil and thermodynamic – and Anita’s patience by experimenting with petty theft, fire starting, and hooky. Thankfully, Anita places Cam and his sisters in summer camps. Here, Cam is safe, supervised, and cared for – and he notices the difference throughout his entire mind and body. Unfortunately, the change is temporary, and he falls back in with Jimmy after his return to the city. This time Anita decides to separate him from Jimmy in a more permanent way.

Cam is on his way back to Owen Sound with Murray, this time to live and attend school for the fourth grade. Before they arrive at Grandma Waugh’s, they make a stop at The Chatty, a farmer’s bar just outside of their destination town. Murray leaves Cam hot and thirsty in the truck as he drinks beer after beer with other men who also apparently have nowhere better to be on a summer’s afternoon. The rest of Cam’s Owen Sound exile goes just as poorly as he endures Murray’s impossible mood swings and deep sadness, exacerbated by their stay in his childhood home.

Finally, Cam is able to rejoin his mother and sisters in Toronto. Not only is he now free of his father’s whiplashing personality, he is also mostly free of the asthma that has plagued his young life. Ventolin, the newly available medicine, is the key to Cam’s ultimate freedom; he can now play sports, and avoid habitual hospital visits and suffocating pain. Still burdened by four mouths to feed and no fatherly support, Anita moves the family into subsidized housing that rightfully earns the name The Dump. The piss-covered elevators and cockroach-infested closets seep into Cam’s identity and make him resent Murray – on the few occasions he makes an appearance, that is.

Conditioned at home by disproportionate punishments and conditional kindness, Cam must learn that every child is deserving of empathy and structure from his extended family, like Uncle Wesley, Uncle Paul and Aunt Joy. Cam is also empowered by the opportunity to return to summer camps again this year, one funded by the Salvation Army and the other by Pastor Walsh and his son Joseph.

Unfortunately, Cam’s feelings of inclusion and care are not carried through to the school year. In the classroom, most of his teachers fail to see beyond the symptoms of his homelife and expect nothing more than inconsistent attendance, disruption, and backtalk. It’s not until Cam excels in the fifth-grade speech competition that he receives academic praise and pride.

But, like most things in his childhood, this is short lived, and for sixth grade Cam is forced to return to Owen Sound with his father for the school year. This time Murray has an apartment for the two of them to live in, but Cam is forced to walk everywhere because Murray’s license is suspended. When Murray decides that Cam’s asthma is “all in his head” and revokes his puffer access, Cam becomes suffocated by his geographical, paternal, and medical circumstances.

On a weekend visit to Toronto, Cam meets Dave Scholey, his mother’s new boyfriend.

While Dave’s guarded personality has the power to repel Cam at first, it doesn’t take long for the stability and calmness Dave offers to draw him in; that and Dave’s status as a fellow asthmatic. But, all that Dave offers is soon after contrasted with Murray’s turbulence. Upon returning to Owen Sound, Cam is shuffled between extended family as his father plunges into the deep sadness caused by undiagnosed bipolar 2. Cam is removed from Murray’s custody that winter, when – unbeknownst to Cam – Murray is arrested and subsequently sentenced to several months at a hospital for the criminally insane.

During his father’s incarceration, Cam stays with his Uncle Paul’s family on their pseudo-farm. Believing his father is in a regular hospital dealing with his deep sadness, Cam soaks up all the kindness, compassion, and proportionate reactions he can from his temporary family. Just as the school year ends, Cam spends one more happy afternoon with his father – neither know that this will be the last time they ever spend together.

Cam returns to Toronto to live with his mother and sisters. The move goes smoothly and, once home, his mother gives him the one puzzle piece he’s been missing for so long: security.

She tells him he is safe, protected, and provided for, finally. Murray’s disappearing act after dropping Cam off only solidifies his mother’s promises.

As a family, Anita, Dave, Cam, Karen, and Corinne move to Ajax to start a new family life together. As happy as this togetherness makes Cam feel, Anita’s request that Cam take Dave’s last name sends Cam spiraling. What does it mean to be Cam Scholey? What happens when his father finds out about this Waugh family betrayal? But again, this resistance is matched by the security and care that Dave offers – he has whisked them away from The Dump, funds Cam’s hockey dreams, provides unlimited access to Ventolin, and offers a family setting more like those Cam sees on TV.

With life stabilizing, Cam allows himself to make friends and join teams. Namely, he befriends David Tennant who propels him through intramural sports. It is a friendship without secrecy and wrongdoings, so it is unfamiliar but welcomed. Life is sweet, and then it’s not. After a killball victory for this pair, Cam learns that David has died suddenly from an asthma attack just hours after the game. Not only is this a loss of friendship, it becomes a loss of faith, particularly in Ventolin and its power to protect Cam from David’s tragic fate.

Cam focuses on school, which he loves and excels in, now that his home life is not such a distraction. With academic success comes academic opportunity, and Cam looks to Dave for post-secondary guidance. Dave does more than guide; he offers to pay for all Cam’s expenses if he gets into university. Now Cam has a real reason to care about his studies and think about the future.

It doesn’t take Cam long to realize though that dreaming of the future renders it susceptible to ghosts from the past. As he navigates life in the Greater Toronto Area, he experiences multiple near-collisions with his past as Cam Waugh; his aunt, an old friend, and a cousin brush past him and heighten the mental tug-of-war between Waugh and Scholey. And, more than that, they haunt him with the looming threat of Murray’s return and wrath. Cam and Dave’s relation becomes complicated by Anita’s jealousy of their bond; she throws around threats of sending the children back to Murray to keep them in line.

Eventually, Cam’s fears come true: Waugh and Scholey collide when Murray makes an appearance at their home one afternoon. Although it is made clear to Murray he isn’t welcome, the encounter generates fear in all three children as they move about their lives in the following weeks. Cam now has something to lose if Murray asserts his power over their lives, and he grasps frantically at university, stability, and all the imagined possibilities of his future.

The rest of that summer passes without a Murray reappearance and Cam is able to look ahead again without feeling the need to watch over his shoulder. It’s not until he drives past The Dump one afternoon that he realizes how far he has moved beyond everything that is bound up in Cam Waugh. As the dilapidated and dirty complex shrinks in his rearview mirror, Cam is content to keep his eyes on the road ahead, and he can’t help but smile as he does.

It’s only at 54 years old, after Murray’s passing, that Cam is ready to really open up his past and understand how it forced him into a distorted mold and pushed him out, irrevocably altered. His aunt Ruth-Ann, Murray Waugh’s sister, plays an invaluable role in this journey, giving Cam copies of Murray’s poems, some of which were written to his children. His words open Cam up to Murray’s reflective mind, his love, and the conflicting forces within him. It is through these words that Cameron Scholey starts to heal and live peacefully.