Post-war America is divided. Most descendants of the survivors live in the crowded but safe haven of the Boundary. Outside are the wild lands, abandoned more than a century ago due to post-war pollution. Here live the outcasts, the damaged, the unwanted by those within the Boundary, leading a precarious existence.

Rebecca, crushed under the heel of the reproductive laws, stumbles upon a dark conspiracy when she discovers the son she was forced to give up no longer leads a safe but bleak life in a state orphanage but was shipped outside the Boundary with a group of other preteens and left there to fend for himself or die.

Driven by anger and grief, she begins to learn secrets she is not supposed to know – dangerous secrets like what the population control laws are really for, what happens when human rights are stripped down for the Greater Good, and how far corrupt and greedy leaders are prepared to go to enhance their wealth and gain the secret of eternal life.