Tosca Lee once again crafts a story that keeps you breathlessly turning pages until the very end. And then it leaves you wanting more.

We meet Wynter Roth in the middle of her story – she’s being forcibly removed from The Enclave, the home of the cult known as New Earth. She leaves with one goal in mind – to return and rescue her sister Jaclyn and Jaclyn’s daughter Truly. There’s just one problem – Jaclyn is married to the leader of New Earth, a man named Magnus. And he’s the one kicking Wynter out into the world that he has taught his followers to fear. Thankfully, she’s barely past the boundary of New Earth when she is met by an old family friend, Julie, who is determined to help Wynter get her bearings. Julie and her husband Ken let Wynter move into the apartment over their garage and they make arrangements for her to see a therapist when she becomes overwhelmed by all the sudden change in her life.

The outside world is a strange place to Wynter. She’s never used a smart phone, watched television, or “surfed” the internet. And the world she’s entered is facing a serious problem that is only just becoming apparent. Numerous people are struggling with what seems to be an early-onset form of dementia and the doctors are baffled as to the cause. Especially because it seems to be contagious. To make matters worse, the power is going out and the gas stations are running out of fuel. Outside forces using the health scare to their advantage perhaps?

Beautifully weaving flashbacks together with Wynter’s current experiences, Lee takes the reader on an emotional ride through the events that led to Wynter’s expulsion from the Enclave and places her squarely at the center of a national health crisis. She reconnects with a former cult member that had supposedly died and even gets a chance to see her sister (outside of the Enclave) who entrusts her with the monumental task of transporting precious cargo that could hold the answer to curing the epidemic that is sweeping the nation. Along the way, she meets Chase, a former Marine who makes it his personal mission to help Wynter make her very important trip (once he forces the truth out of her, that is). And that former cult member? She introduces Wynter and Chase to Noah who has gone to great lengths to provide a safe, secure hideaway for just the type of crisis currently taking place.

Underlying all of this is Wynter’s own personal struggle to figure out just what or who is worth believing in. As a child, Wynter’s faith in Magnus and his teaching was firm and unwavering. In her adult years, she learns things about Magnus that cause her to question everything she once believed. So is she really sorry to be leaving when Magnus casts her out? And just exactly how does Jaclyn, the wife of The Prophet, come into possession of items that could prove invaluable to the CDC in treating and stopping what is shaping up to be a pandemic?