A futuristic thriller, set in 2133 AD. Rising oceans have consumed farmland, storms have flattened buildings and wild fires have consumed vast areas. Cities have imploded, their homes and high rises sacked by armed vandals. Narland is an isolated, autonomous region, populated by children eighty years earlier, who live without electricity, firearms and fossil fuels. The Code governs their conduct. The most severe penalty, for murder, is 7 years banishment into the wilderness. Away from the outside world, they thrive in a virtual Garden of Eden. Every year, as a rite of passage, boys 15 and older are permitted to go on a scouting-scavenging mission to the northern or southern ends of Narland. People may marry only after they are 18 years old, and able to support themselves. The protagonist, Ben, is a 17-year-old hunter-fisher, too young to marry Sara, who is pregnant after a fling with his older brother, Dan. She must marry Dan or the baby will be taken away from her and adopted. The antagonisht, Gaza, is a murderer and rapist, banished into the wilderness. He has made his way to the outside, where he survives as the slave of Gamer, the teen-aged grandson of the Outsiders' leader, who falls under his spell after hearing stories of Narland. Gamer convinces his grandfather to send a scouting party to Narland to find out if Gaza's stories are true. The novel opens with the Outsiders' scouting party capturing Dan. They are torturing him to extract information, as Ben watches from the dark, agonizing. Should he risk his life, or let him die? Ben kills Gamer and rescues Dan. Seeking revenge, the Outsiders invade. The Nar have never been to war. The only one to have killed an Outsider, Ben, is tasked with recruiting a defense force. He is assisted by chestnut haired Penta, also 17, who is a hunter, a trade usually reserved for the men; and the androgynous, likely autistic, diminutive farrier's apprentice, Willow, who loves animals.