Fifteen year old Eli Goldman's mother dies giving birth to little Eli, and his family blames him for the tragedy that was foretold by a Gypsy woman earlier. Reviled by his family and feared by the many street gangs that rule the streets of the South Bronx, Eli is a boy who doesn't belong. At eleven he survives a terrible attack by a pack of feral dogs and goes on the hunt with a homemade club he calls the boom. Shortly after, late at night, in the ruins of the South Bronx he sees a beautiful young girl watching him from the window of a burned out brownstone, her figure revealed by the headlights of a passing car. Over the years he can feel her with him in the ruins as he hunts the feral dogs of the Bronx, and establishes himself as the apex predator in a violent world of hunter and hunted. Eli can sense that the time has come for his Angel to finally reveal herself. And as the rumble of the train speeding toward him gets louder and louder, he waits for his destiny. When it finally arrives young Eli is immersed in a world he never knew existed, a world so terrible that only dead men could tell the tale. And their not talking.