When Susan and her younger brother Charles and Murray, are sent to stay with their eccentric uncle Farley in Canada, little do they realise that they are stepping into the adventure of a lifetime. Uncle Farley lives in a dilapidated old house that looks like a ship, and when the children wake one morning to discover they've been washed out to sea, the name Drift House begins to make sense. Without sails or an engine to propel them, and with no communication from the world they know, Drift House floats along aimlessly until a clan of diabolical mermaids lays siege to the house. It will take all of Susan's ingenuity - along with some help from a great whale, a legendary pirate, and a marauding band of privateers - to keep the mermaids from stopping time itself.