When senior high school instructor Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, proceed to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is normally away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering inside a cupboard and looking to end up being wiped out. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee for an illusion of basic safety around the Quirk family’s Connecticut farm, they find that the consequences of chaos aren’t easily put right.

While Maureen battles to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers five years’ worthy of of diaries, letters, and paper clippings in his family’s house. As unimaginable secrets emerge, Caelum grapples with the past and struggles to fashion another in the ashes of tragedy. His search for meaning is at once mythic and modern, personal and quintessentially American.