An incisive, sensitive exploration of the questions of life, death, mortality, and immortality uses the leaves of a tree as symbols of enjoying life to the fullest and accepting mortality with dignity and equanimity.

A shipment of dinosaur bones meant for a new exhibit at the Capitol City Natural History Museum has disappeared, and so have the five paleontologists who were working late at the museum, including Wilson Kipper's mother--so Wilson and his museum friends set out to solve the mystery.

Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.