Cooper and his mom run an antique business out of the old barn behind their house. Actually, Cooper does most of the work, since his mom is often lost in her own thoughts. But with Cooper riding his bike, Squeaky, to garage sales looking for treasures, setting the prices, and ordering the groceries, he and his mom do just fine.

Then one day he meets Decto, a metal detector. Together they find Revolutionary War artifacts in the backyard—and life gets complicated. Suddenly strangers want to take the property from Cooper and his mom and turn it into a historical park. The more Cooper learns about history and his own heritage, the more determined he is to resist. But how can a mere kid—even with some help from Decto, an Iroquois storyteller and coin collector named Jan, and Mr. Shepherd, who runs the town’s historical museum—thwart the intruders?