In the year 2045, climate change is killing people. Fifteen-year old Lily Star must use her power over water to save her family and thousands of refugees in the parched, superheated American West. She's a powerful Diviner who can find and raise water from deep underground. At Everspring, the family's only source, she's been raising water since she was thirteen, but now it's dying from climate change. The Star family must ration every drop to stay alive. Ash from forest fires falls like snow, relentlessly blowing sand and dust are a fact of life, and millions of Floaters, driven out of their homes by flooding coastlines, drift inland looking for food, water, and new homes, which are in desperately short supply. The United States has split into two unfriendly factions, the United Western Republic and the Eastern Alliance. When the Republic's Minister of Water, Tanner Voles, discovers that Lily has the power that he's been seeking, he pressures her to use it for his own political gain and the benefit of the water-hungry capitol, Aquion. But Lily and her family refuse, suspecting that Voles, a notoriously self-serving and evil man, will exploit her to get the water for the Republic and then kill her so nobody else can use her power. To gain control over her, he sends the family to Floater Camp 65, a broiling wasteland filled with thousands of Floaters. There Lily befriends Nate Arnett and the group 1Planet, an underground resistance group of kids who fight the government and give their generation hope for the future. At the camp, Lily's grandmother tells her that she can reverse climate change in and around their sequoia-forest home, Skywood. She only has to raise the Black Lake, the source of Everspring, a vast body of water that lies a mile underground – which is what Tanner Voles is pressuring her to do. But Gran has a plan to keep the water from him and the Republic and use it for the good of the Floaters, and the local environment. Lily's ability to do that is put into serious peril when Voles gives her a cocktail of drugs that he thinks will enhance her power. Instead it causes her to lose it and almost kills her. But it's discovered that her nine-year old brother Justin also has the power, and it's growing exponentially. He restores Lily's power to an even greater degree, and is instrumental to the exciting conclusion of the story. Along the way, Lily's belief in herself will be sorely tested, her like of Nate Arnett will turn to love, and she will be wracked with grief and guilt over the violence she leaves in her wake. But ultimately, she will come to believe that she can save her family and the Floaters dying of thirst. And at the same time, change the planet, at least their small slice of it.
