"The World went to Hell. From greed, from stupidity, from valuing artificial things more than the nature around them, our ancestors destroyed the world. Great cities, larger than we can even imagine; great nations spanning continents; great business enterprises encompassing the whole world; communications that circled the globe and even had equipment in space above us; medical knowledge able to fix broken hearts, broken kidneys, broken lungs, and broken minds; all of it gone because they had to fight, they had to burn oil and coal, they had to make plastics, they had to dam the rivers, they had to cut down the forests, they had to hunt animals to extinction, and all of that was more important than survival. All of that was more important than caring for each other, looking after the troubled, taking care of the natural world, or simply being in it..." Three hundred years later Alder is seeking the true story of how their ancestors survived. She meets a young man named Bobcat and together they find the answers.