What are the mysterious lights flitting above Oswego Lake on moonlit nights? Marsh gas? Ball lightning? Or holdovers from the dawn of Creation? The natives who once lived near the lake kept their children inside at night for fear of the Kawak-moon, as they called them.
When Jonathan Oliver makes it his homeschool project to track down the source of the Lake Lights, his search takes him to Iron Mountain's abandoned Prosser Mine and its dark secrets. Something has been inhabiting Iron Mountain even before the arrival of humans in the area, but these nocturnal cave-dwellers prove to be more elusive—and dangerous—than Jon and his family could ever imagine. Dr. Graham Mackenzie, a Scottish volcanologist, lends his technical expertise to this hazardous search—with inconclusive results. In the end, Jon's quarry reveals itself in a most unexpected fashion.
Meanwhile, after his physicist father goes missing in the wilds of Afghanistan, Jon is left to decode a cryptic message leading to a remarkable, game-changing invention whose purpose at first mystifies him. With his grandfather's help, Jon matches wits with an unscrupulous scientist who will stop at nothing to steal the device and sell it to a shadowy criminal organization. Jon's dual discoveries not only help him to deliver his city from total annihilation but also ultimately rock the scientific world to its very foundations.
