It s been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex s relatives trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall the first book in this trilogy. It s also been six months of waiting for Alex s parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex s parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.