Everyone knows how clouds are formed: evaporation, accumulation, condensation, and (eventually) precipitation. However, very few know that human souls behave in much the same way.

In the 1930s, Garden City, Kansas, bore little resemblance to its name. Suffering from the longest continuous drought in the nation’s history, the advent of the worldwide economic downturn, known as the Great Depression, proved especially devastating to the farming communities of the Plain States. Finally the entire region became plagued by murderous dust storms (black blizzards), which stripped the land of its ability to sustain crops and sandblasted hope from the lives of its people.

Amid the backdrop of this triad of tribulation, a little girl will be beset by a host of devastating personal problems, challenging her to cling to her faith in God.

One day, while the town watches, terrified, as another scouring storm approaches, a mysterious cloud descends from the heavens to blanket the town and dissipate the storm. Instead of their despair dissolving with the storm, the town collapses into panic and then madness. Will the cloud prove to be a herald of salvation or a portent of doom?

At once, the girl (Polly) becomes embroiled in a conflict between faith and fear, as she is presented with a unique opportunity to save her town. But at what cost?