Nineteen-year-old Erik Timmers has spent his whole life being kept small.
His father beats him. His mother watches from the kitchen window and says nothing. In a remote Montana valley, with no money and nowhere to run, Erik has counted the weeks until he can finally leave.
Then the grid dies. No trucks. No phones. No road out.
Beaten half to death in his own yard, Erik is saved by a stranger off the mountain: Harlan, a long-haired recluse with a revolver on his hip and a hidden shelter high above the timberline. Harlan has a daughter, an orphaned grizzly cub named Koda, and a hard question for the boy he just pulled out of the woodpile.
Can you become a man before winter kills you?
But Erik's father is coming. He has found other desperate men, and he has found a purpose, and he will burn a mountain range to get his son back in his place.