It is 1915 and thirteen-year old William is sent by his mother to spend the summer working with an eccentric inventor--Alexander Graham Bell--and his crew in a tiny Nova Scotia town. They are hard at work designing and building a hydrofoil boat that they hope will help the Allies defend themselves from the German U-boats that are sinking ships and threatening coastal towns during the war. But the sleeping village life William thinks he has been sentenced to turns out to be something quite different as the young boy finds himself embroiled in a deadly mystery that is plaguing the hydrofoil and its builders.