The year is 2080, fifty years after a large asteroid crashed into the earth, killing 99 percent of its inhabitants and destroying the infrastructure that supported civilization. The few people that survived scratch out a meager existence hunting small animals, fishing, and gathering the few fruits and vegetables that grow wild on the new earth. This is a story that begins in a community of thirty-two living on the shore of a lake.

After fifty years of dim semidarkness caused by the smoke, ash, and debris that has circled the earth since the disaster, the sun has reappeared, and more plants have begun to grow, raising hopes for a brighter future. But those hopes are dashed when the fish in the lake that supported them through the dark days grow scarce.

Conflict wracks the small community as the leadership insists that they can survive where they are, while the younger generation seeks to explore and rediscover the world beyond. A political miscalculation and a clever ploy by one of the young residents results in approval of an expedition consisting of five members with vastly different skills and conflicting goals.

The expedition is wrought with danger, discovery, and surprising plot turns. Meanwhile, death in the community left behind upsets and challenges anything they have ever known. It will take courage, intelligence, strength, cooperation, and faith for any of them to survive.