Casey Rineheart just graduated high school. She's struggling with depression, and now grief over losing her mother, the night after graduation, after already losing her older brother, Dewey, a year ago.
This decides it for Casey, she's going to get better. For her brother, her mother, and most importantly, for her father whom she doesn't want to mourn again if he lost Casey too.
She decides to move away from home in St. Talla, Nevada, to somewhere in the middle of the beautiful woods she grew up in, in a cabin in Crownburrow, Oregon; left to her by her mother. There she will go to stay, write novels, and try to get better.
An unexpected visitor finds her trapped in her home, she's attacked. Just when she feels as though she's about to meet her end, a strange boy from out of the shadows, it seems, saves her. Changes her, and she doesn't know what to do to repay him, or escape him. However, escape sometimes seems to be far from her mind. She feels a draw to stay with the strange boy; a weird, compelling feeling.
Who is this boy? What happened to her? Who will she become?