Seventeen-year-old Tobi Mathews is frightened by her ex-Marine father's ominous predictions about the end-of-the-world. Are they true or caused by post traumatic stress disorder like her mother says?

Tobi's father moves the family to an isolated farm to escape the coming calamity. When her mother leaves to find a job to earn the money needed for the farm, his anxiety intensifies.

Afraid her mother might not return, Tobi can no longer deal with her father's endless rants about Armageddon. Led by the dream to go to medical school, she steals her dad's station wagon to escape and live with her mother in Cielo de Ventana.

On the way, the wagon breaks down. A man who is traveling to the town where her mother lives stops to help her. Tobi accepts his offer of a ride there not realizing the serendipitous meeting of this stranger is no mere coincidence.