Twelve year-old Rad Sergeant and his little brother Tyler live with their dad on his horse ranch. They are living every boy's fantasy until a rumor of a ghost living in the mountain behind their ranch is reported. Rad intends to find out if the ghost is real and enlists the help of his two best friends, Max Frost and Peter Logan, to help investigate. Before the story ends, the boys survive a tornado, Rad falls into a pit that nearly takes his life and they come face to face with the ghost.

The characters of Mountain Valley are real kids dealing with every day problems who need fantasy...

Rad Sergeant, his two best friends. Peter Logan and Max Frost, and Rad's little brother Ty, build a raft with plans of floating on the Oakdale Lake all summer as if it were the mighty Mississippi. However, tragedy strikes on the first floating trip: Ty disappears. "Presumed drowned," the authorities said, and everyone believes them--everyone except Rad and his strong-minded friends of Mountain Valley. They cannot accept that Ty drowned. They believe Ty was kidnapped and intend to find him. Rad and his friends begin a journey filled with doubt and impossible hopes as they search an island...

As Oklahoma contends with a drought that summer, Rad Sergeant, Peter Logan, Max Frost, Tyler Sergeant and Joshua Myers are searching the mountains behind the Sergeant's ranch for a herd of wild horses. Tyler has another love that summer, and when he is not helping in the search for the wild horses, he is fulfilling his dream of becoming a helicopter pilot.

The boy's discovery of the wild horses creates an investigation that leads them into Missouri where they learn the true story behind the horses and a young man's disappearance from the valley a year earlier. The drought ends with a...