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In the spring of 1998, up-and-coming DJ Ewan Denmark is heading towards a clash with his greatest living enemy, and it isn't the Spice Girls. It's his mother.

Following the death of his grandmother, Ewan is afraid that her house out in the country, where he spent many halcyon summers, will end up in the hands of strangers. He can't let that happen. It's the only home that's ever meant anything to him.

Life in Chicago is not what it used to be for Ewan. Relocating deep into Ohio countryside has its appeals. He can start working on his own music for once, instead of doing remixes for popular 90's divas and putting on three-hour gigs at private parties along Lake Michigan. Not since childhood has Ewan had a home of his own, and what better place for him to try being an adult for once than his grandparents' little farm? Sure, the cows have gone now, and all that's left are twenty-three rather useless acress, a pond with a few ducks and very hazardous dock, and a rooster named Kasimir who is too smart for his own tailfeathers. Ewan has the perfect room picked out to set up his equipment, ready to roll into the next chapter of his life, but his mother Denora has other ideas.

She's inherited the house, its acreage, and all her mother's things. More than happy to see Ewan step into adulthood after jumping ship on his college education in order to hang out with Chicago's elite club kids, Denora is hardly going to let him have the farm without a decent donation. She'll be happy to give it to him as long as he gets married first.

Born into a family of lawyers almost thirty years before, Ewan isn't sure the idea is fair and just. His teenaged niece Libra is quick to take his side. His best friend since childhood, Tab Christopher, wants Ewan to beat Denora at her own game, but he just isn't sure how far Ewan is willing to go. When Ewan contacts his old flame Annette to see if she'd go in on the scheme, Tab and Libra see that Ewan is willing to go very far indeed.

While Ewan plunges into country life, complete with an ancient butter-churner that gets him in touch with his roots, and a homeless goat named Socrates, there is the slightest chance that Ewan is making a huge mistake. For one thing, his niece won't leave him alone about his past in Chicago, making him wish he didn't have secrets. With the feistiness of youth and the makings of another lawyer in the family, Libra begins her own investigation into her uncle's spontaneous desire to leave Chicago and why, when he thinks she's not looking, he seems so sad. Both encouraging and cautious of Libra's detective skills, Tab can do nothing but offer Ewan glimpses into the past when they played some of the best pranks Vinton County has ever seen. Those antics of yesteryear got the attention of the former Sheriff Morgan, and now their fresh round of capers have caught the eye of the new Sheriff Morgan. As supportive as Tab was for Libra's attempts to unearth Ewan's secrets, he's less so when she realizes that his feelings for Ewan are in conflict with what Ewan wants.

Ewan, Tab, Libra and a couple of unforeseen allies band together to help save a meaningful piece of family history. If Ewan can be conned by his own mother, then he can certainly learn to con her right back.