The story is set in 1888 in Iowa during a punishing, deep winter. Elias Thorne, a weary but resilient farmer, and his wife, Clara, are enduring a relentless deep freeze when the weather takes a sudden, terrifying turn. On a frigid morning, the temperature plummets to freezing. However, a break in the clouds unveils an intense, summer-like sun. Within hours, the temperature soars to an incomprehensible rise in the middle of January. This sudden, unnatural heat turns the massive snowpack into a catastrophic torrent of meltwater.

They’d last seen the larger universe five hours ago, right before the ship entered the magnetic fold of the Eye and they began the arduous procedure of checking in at the dozen or so checkpoint that lay between them and the star colony. Thousands of glowing pinpricks – pupils without irises or whites or eyelids or lashes – blinked out and replaced by grey walls, dark corridors. Huge and endless and claustrophobic.