16-year-old Henrietta Goodness - Hank to all that know her - has heard all the stories about how the Dust made the dead rise. She’s heard about how life changed. But that was a long time ago, and Hank is ready for another normal dry and dusty Florida summer. She knows the thunder doesn’t really promise rain. Instead, Hank and her brother will do their chores, run into town as much as they can get away with, and lock up tight and safe in their Aunt Marty’s house once the sun goes down. That’s the plan, at least, until an itinerant tent revival rolls onto their land, with a Reborn - one of the risen dead - traveling caged with them. The arrival of an unknown cousin connected to the revival starts Hank on the road to solving a mystery that even the government might not want unraveled. There’s nowhere to go when the night isn’t safe and there’s no one to trust when everyone might be part of a conspiracy to keep the Reborn walking.

The summer’s been hard on Hank Goodness. Family secrets upended the simple life she shared with her aunt and brother and set Hank on the road to a grim transformation in a hidden town. Now, Hank doesn’t know if she’s a monster or not. But she’s won her freedom and is on a mission: to rescue her brother Ben from a horrible fate. Hank is on the run. To stop what’s happening to her brother, she needs to figure out where to go next while navigating her new friendship with Jimmy and determining who in the world she can trust when everyone has betrayed her. Reborn—the risen and feral dead that rose with the Dust—aren’t even the worst of what’s hunting them. Predators are closing in, and they don’t all come in animal form. The dangerous women they meet might help, as long as Hank is willing to take the risk and pay the price. Unknown family history, government experiments, and her own hungry instincts conspire to change her relationship to the Reborn—and threaten her identity and her life.