Trouble is brewing for Lawrence Bell, a young boy who's taunted and bullied by other boys at school. Fearful of what they will do to him, he runs away into the desert, a forbidden place filled with tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and wandering coyotes. He meets a mysterious Navajo man, who hears his story and gives him a turquoise stone to help ward off the danger from the boys. And not a moment too soon. The very next day the boys appear and are about to pounce when Lawrence asks the stone for help. Immediately Lawrence finds himself reduced to the size of a tiny insect. He escapes, but now he must fend for himself against the creatures of the desert. And the stone is nowhere to be found. He must find it in order to get home, but first he encounters floods, battles with the red ants, narrow escapes from spiders, exile, capture, imprisonment in the dreaded fungus pit, and a flight off the notorious Rockface Cliff. Will he find the stone and what will he have learned in his struggle between good and evil?