Wichita, Kansas, in the year 2075. Global warming has triggered a world-wide depression. The ozone layer is depleted, the land parched and ravaged by tornadoes. The Gulf of Mexico laps at the gates of the city.

Inside the circle of the huge Wall which surrounds Wichita, it is like a country club -- emerald lawns and sprinklers making rainbows in the sunlight. Outside the Wall is Calcutta -- dry and dusty, swarms of homeless people and starving street kids.

Adam Twist, a down-and-out private investigator, ekes out a living inside the Wall. The unsolved disappearance of his daughter years ago wrecked his marriage and left him a broken man. Tornadoes and lost children haunt his nightmares.

Now Dora Montrose, rebellious daughter of the most powerful man in Wichita, has run away from the emptiness and corruption of the city and gone outside the Wall.

And Twist must follow into the Hell outside to find her.