High school junior Chava Chavez is trapped in a failing school in a failing city, Angeltown, in 2052. She barely manages to keep from being expelled for failure to learn, which would mean truancy prison. With a sick mother at home, school is no longer important and it is impossible to concentrate on the work. Chava nears expulsion. Attempts to keep the former megalopolis alive are failing. Environmental collapse leads to pollution clouds that sweep the downtown clean of desperate squatters. Schools expel students and send them to truancy prison for not meeting increasingly unobtainable ratings. The State Auto-Defense Forces sweep people out of their homes, out of areas deemed redundant, and people have taken to eating stray cats and dogs as well as pigeons and insects. Many others scrape by with what they have and adapt to the ever worsening conditions, including Chava's family. In 2053, an assault on students at the Central Library during a protest rally simultaneously ends Chava's childhood and thrusts her into adulthood. She is no longer bound to the educational and political system that is killing those outside the protective walls of Saint Bernard. But the state will not tolerate its citizens being free and beyond their control. Chava must escape the State Auto-Defense Forces if she is to survive.
