Uncle is the story of Joe and his Great Uncle Henry. Suddenly banished to spend a summer with this unknown relative, Joe finds not the 'mad' man his mother predicted, but his first true boyhood friend. Over the next ten years Joe and Uncle enjoy superb summer holidays of fun, adventure, learning, inspiration and exploration, which act as a buffer to the other events happening in Joe's life; the death of his father, his mother's remarriage and his long, lonely school years. The advent of adulthood brings Joe the unwelcome realisation that while he has grown up, Uncle never has and maybe his mother's prediction of madness is right after all. After several years of strained, infrequent contact between them, the tables are turned, and it is Henry who now needs the care and support that he once offered to a lonely boy. This is a story of the struggle to understand and accept individual differences, the people and events that shape us, and the meaning of true friendship.