The world, as we know it, has changed considerably. A civil war is raging, between the eastern half of North America and the west. The latest methods of destruction are frightening, brutal, inescapable. They are called light raids - massive laser-beam assaults that are as effective as they are merciless.

Seventeen-year-old Hellene Ariadne, daughter of a prominent Western scientist, has been evacuated to Victoria for her protection. When the letters from her parents suddenly stop, Ariadne is forced to leave the safety of the North and return to her home in Denver Springs. There she finds her house in ruins, the city devastated by a huge light raid.

Ariadne assumes that her parents are dead. But the truth is much worse: her mother is in prison, accused of sabotage and treason, and her father is left helpless, an emotional cripple.

It is up to Ariadne to clear her mother's name. But, as she plunges deeper and deeper into a fatal web of intrigue and deception, she discovers that there are truths far more shocking than war, more devastating than the fiercest light raids...