Plot

Battling their way back after being thrown into the dangerous world of a popular fictional book series, five kids learn that they can't change the past, but how they deal with it in the present will determine their future.

Summer vacation in Mountain's Edge, a sprawling two-square-mile subdivision of three-story half-million-dollar catalogue homes in suburban Denver. At the heart of the subdivision, its own fleet of soccer fields, manicured and gleaming - a game in play, a swarm of 12-year-olds running from end to end, moms and dads in that "off-duty Hollywood" look. At the foot of the subdivision: The desert to one side, long and dry, and endless-looking. To the other side, a span of high-desert foothills, rolling upward into the greener, higher mountains. It is here that two sets of kids - neighbors in both landscape and loss - will wake one morning to find that their paths begin to resemble that of a character in their favorite mythological book series. What they don't yet know is that an invisible darkness following them is what they make it out to be - themselves, their fears about their parents, the frequency of change in their lives, and the instability of a world lived on the mountain's edge.—J. Reuben Appelman