On a spring day in 1933, a strange man with a not-quite-friendly smile appears in Libby Barnett’s backyard. Like a figure from a dark fairy tale, he works a staggering transformation on Libby’s younger sister, and the little girl is lost.

Blaming herself, 13-year-old Libby becomes unshakable in her determination to find her sister. When a young drifter offers help, she gambles on his trustworthiness and sets out with him into the dangerous vagrant underground of the Great Depression. She soon finds she has entered an underworld even more secretive and terrifying, where practitioners of a barbaric, costly magic use stolen children to harness power.

It is from the most lethal of these men that Libby must recover her sister.
She is willing to give everything.
It won’t be enough.