Told in two voices, sixteen-year-old Galliard and seventeen-year-old Stella cross paths and realize they must determine their own futures as strange events occur in Slater, Kansas, and its neighboring commune in 1977.--

Slater, Kansas, 1977. Stella dreams of being a space engineer, but after her mom dies by suicide and her brother runs off to Red Sun, the local hippie commune, she is forced to bring her dreams down to earth to care for her sister, Jill. Galliard has only ever known life inside Red Sun. There, people accept his tics, his Tourette's. But when he's denied Red Sun's resident artist role, which he believed he was destined for, he starts to imagine a life beyond the gates of the compound. The day Stella and Galliard meet, their town is beset by weeks of pink lightning, bloodred rain, unexplained storms. And a countdown clock appears above the town hall... ticking down to some great unknowable end. -- adapted from jacket