Life in Clearwater was quiet, even a little dull for Grim, but it was better than the time he'd spent on the streets of Seattle. Then the strange girl arrived, abandoned at a roadside diner. Drugged, sick, with no memory of her past.

Grim had a bad feeling about her from the beginning but he didn't say anything when his foster mother, Clara, took her in. If anyone needed a home, it was this strange, sad girl. Clara's new Angel.

Michele had always been a good girl, was never in trouble. Then Angel came, and the very night the strange girl appeared, Michele killed a man. It wasn't murder, but it didn't matter. When her old friends shun her, Michele finds friendship again in Clearwater's other outsiders: Grim and Angel.

As Angel's health improves and her memory returns, the hot Clearwater summer becomes increasingly strange. Insanity creeps through the small town like a plague, spawning violence, and no one is immune. And death has arrived in the form of a shadowy figure lurking in the woods at night.