The year is 2054. Global Warming, disease, famine, and war have decimated the human population. Alan Trent, a particularly ambitionless man, who avoids trouble "just like I avoid poison oak and all other things uncomfortable," finds a set of journals while scavenging through a house for food in what used to be Washington State. The journal's author was a woman named Claire Huston. Her words inspire Alan to continue writing in her journals in the hope that by doing so "her humanity will somehow stay alive ...." She also causes him to do something wholly uncharacteristic -- rescue a boy from a group of men. He rescues the boy all right, but it's much more complicated than that. What follows is a deadly game of hide-and-seek, hardship, and survival, where, at every turn, Alan is forced to confront his own humanity.