Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, 10 men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers --- chosen male descendants of the original 10 --- are allowed to cross to the wastelands. The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. At the end of one summer, little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others.