Living in an igloo of ice and trash bags half a year after a cataclysmic nuclear disaster, Emily, convinced that she will be hated as the daughter of the drunken father who caused the meltdown, assumes a fictional identity while protecting a homeless boy.

Six months ago, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Her father was in charge of the plant-- was he drunk when it happened? Instead of following the rest of the refugees after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself. When Emily befriends Cameron, a homeless boy, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But can she outrun her past, or escape her grief?