When the farm where she lives begins to die, Anastasia's father casts out her mother and sister in order to save it. In revenge, her mother takes Anastasia as well. The three of them move to a strange town where the streets never stay still, and only the rats know way.

They are saved from a squalid life when her mother unexpectedly remarries, but Anastasia does not know quite what to make of her new stepsister, and before she can truly settle into yet another life her mother begins to act strangely and her sister grows deathly ill...