The Munns, father John and sons Chris and Tim, recede to the woods of rural Georgia. Their life together is forever changed with the arrival of Uncle Deel, though the tragedy that follows forces troubled Chris to become a man.

Charlie McGee is a young woman with the unwanted and often uncontrollable gift of psychokinesis, lighting fires by mere thought. Charlie has been in hiding for nearly all her life from a top-secret government fringe group headed by the maniacal John Rainbird, who wants to find and use Charlie as the ultimate weapon of war.