Protect the family, best effort, no whining. That’s Papa’s rule. In the aftermath of a devastating pandemic known as the Pretty Pox, Arie McInnes and a small group of fellow survivors have been forced from the relative safety of an attic hideaway into the forest, carrying little more than the clothes on their backs. This second installment of August Ansel’s richly imagined post-apocalyptic series finds Arie and her ragtag family deep in the redwoods. Cold, hungry, and vulnerable, they’re determined to travel on foot to God’s Land—the troubled but familiar homestead in the hills where Arie was raised. The road home, though, is strange and arduous, littered with other survivors. Discovering which of them are allies—and which are not—is now a matter of life and death