In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her people survive by scavenging in the detritus of an abandoned civilization. Theirs is a world of children - by the time they are twenty, each of them dies from a disease they call posies. When her brother sickens, Ice Cream sets out on the trail of a cure, led by a stranger whose intentions remain unclear. It's a quest that will lead her to love and heartbreak, to captivity and to a nation's throne, and ultimately into a war that threatens to doom everyone she loves.