A year after her best friend Lora mysteriously disappears from Clearwood Home, twelve-year-old Ellis is put in charge of the orphanage's new arrival: Pip.

Small, silent, and strange, Pip is inexplicably drawn to the eerie Ghost Tree, a fossilized relic of the Blight that killed every forest in the world. But Pip's connection to nature makes her, Ellis, and their friend Jasper targets of Mother Dear, a sinister, scientific mastermind determined to destroy the natural world and replace it with her robot-hybrid one.

Kidnapped by their teacher, kidnapped again by Mother Dear's robotic pterodactyl-like creatures, and then held captive at her work camp, Ellis, Pip, and Jasper must work together to make their daring escape, learn the truth of Lora's fate, and uncover the key to nature's regeneration.