Miles is a young actor from Toronto who visits rural Ontario to stay at the home of elderly farmers Angus and Morgan, in order to research what life on a farm is like for a role that he is about to play in a new theater production. Both Angus and Morgan have never married, Angus, because he suffered brain damage whilst in London during World War Two, and Morgan, because he has become Angus' primary carer. Angus is the play's eponymous "drawer boy", a name he earned in his youth when his talent for drawing emerged, and he began to draw buildings in the manner of an architect.
Morgan is able to comfort Angus by constantly telling the story of their lives, but Miles soon comes to find out that the women who loved them and who followed them to Canada to be with them were in fact made up by Morgan. Although he knows he must not mention the real story to Angus in person, he decides to retell their sad tale in the play he is writing. This triggers Angus' memories, and he and Miles begin to trade identities in distinctly alternate existences.
