Three teens band together in order to sway the government to repeal all rulings in support of a procedure in which unwanted teenagers are captured and are unwound into parts that can be reused for transplantation.

In Union Grove, early spring is a challenging season, known as the "six weeks want," a time when fresh food is scarce and the winter stores are dwindling. The town is struggling in particular this year as the Hudson River trade route to Albany has been halted by the local plantation tycoon Stephen Bullock, who has deemed it too resource-intensive and is now striving for self-sufficiency. Meanwhile, after returning from his travels around what is left of the United States, Daniel Earle is intent on resurrecting a newspaper for the community, and finds an interesting story to cover when representatives of a group of anti-establishment, hyper-liberals known as the Berkshire People's Republic arrive in the town.

Ahab Goldstein is a seventh-grader living in an United States (specifically Maine) where the environment has turned toxic, and the corrupt Environmental Police Force is in control, limiting access to natural resources like gas and water, issuing fines, and transporting "fragile" species (pretty much all of them) to the Center for Species Rehabilitation in New Arcadia (a dubious refuge at best); so when Ahab and his friends find a real live bullfrog on an island in the toxic harbor, possibly the last one in America, they are faced with a choice--turn it over (NO!), leave it alone, or bike to Canada to find it a mate.

"Discovered by Dr. Dahlia Black, the mysterious Pulse was sent by a highly intelligent intergalactic species that called themselves the Ascendants. It soon becomes clear this alien race isn't just interested in communication--they are capable of rewriting human DNA, in an astonishing process they call the Elevation. Five years after the Pulse, acclaimed journalist Keith Thomas sets out to make sense of the event that altered the world. Thomas travels across the country to interview members of the task force who grappled to decode the Pulse and later disseminated its exact nature to worried citizens. He interviews the astronomers who initially doubted Black's discovery of the Pulse--an error that critics say led to the world's quick demise. Thomas also hears from witnesses of the Elevation and people whose loved ones vanished in the Finality, an event that, to this day, continues to puzzle Pulse researchers, even though theories abound about the Ascendants' motivation." --Amazon.com.