It’s a book about a boy and his hunting dogs. The dogs hunt raccoons (which are killed). While the boy’s dogs are protecting him from the neighbor boy’s dog, the neighbor boy dies from an accidental axe wound to the gut while trying to stop the dogs from fighting. A mountain lion attacks the boy and his dogs kill it but both dogs die afterwards, one from wounds, one from grief. Where does the red fern grow? Between the graves of the two dogs.