In the spectacular and corrupt city of Polit, sixteen year-old Alana Bendrece and her family live in squalor, in a walled-in ghetto aptly named Black. After having killed an attacker from outside her caste neighborhood, she is arrested, quickly tried, and then condemned.

Hours later, Alana is flown in a Helicere II aircraft to a land far, far away. An island only a chosen few even know exists. A place reserved for "special cases". Blindfolded, and with her hands lashed behind her back, she is pitched out the cargo door as the aircraft approaches the island. Terrified, she falls, and falls, and falls…

But death doesn’t capture young Alana, rather the cords of a vast net stretched along the shoreline of a frightening beach. What awaits her in this strange new land is at times confusing, wonderful, and yet more horrific than anything she has experienced in her life.

There are people inhabiting the amazing island called "Folly"; those who live high in the massive branches of five hundred foot-tall trees, and those who dwell in a Medieval-like walled city many miles away from the mighty giants of the lush forest.

Alana soon discovers that despite her rescue by a young tree dweller, someone living in one or the other—or both—of these vastly different groups on Folly wants her dead, and they will destroy the island and every person on it in order to get it done.   Yet, Alana has a power. One that even she is unaware of. Her challenge will be to evade capture and torture, and in the process discover the true depths of this gift, and rescue those she has come to love.