Hundreds of birds lined his maple trees. In his eighteen years as a country veterinarian, Max Thorn had never seen anything like them. They were watching, waiting until Max's wife, Ellen, left on her morning run. At the edge of their property, she turned to wave and began to fade before his eyes. One minute she was there, the next she had vanished, leaving no trace but a circle of dead foliage and birds.

Presumed guilty of Ellen's murder, Max finds himself on the run, desperate to prove his innocence. But as he soon discovers, his wife's chilling disappearance is not an isolated incident. Across the nation, other strange vanishings have been reported, other mentions of the mysterious birds and scorched earth, and it's clear that nothing will ever be the same again. Now, it will take a man, a woman, and a child to discover the chilling truth, before all hope vanishes.