Life for 13-year-old Joseph Young is pre-defined, living in a small-town farming community where generations upon generations have lived, where everybody knows everybody, and where everybody takes care of everybody. When the government's newly formed Children's Alliance Coalition announces they will be coming to town to audit families, everybody is walking on eggshells. Families are told that if they do not meet Coalition standards, their children will be taken and placed in approved Coalition homes, never to see their families again upon fear of punishment or death. Captured while trying to hide himself and other children, Joseph is forcibly taken from his widowed mother. Over the next six years he is groomed as an Enforcer for the Coalition. His eyes are opened to a new life of distrust, deceit, and hidden agendas. But a shocking death sets Joseph as leader of the Coalition. When he discovers that rebels are harbouring children at a secret haven called the Talon, he must decide whether to risk his own life to aid them or betray the rebels and sentence the leaders to death, including his own mother, whom he yearns to see again.