A climate crisis condemns all life on Earth to perish within the next five years. As panic takes over, the New England town of Middlewich quietly begins to gather supplies, walling itself off from the chaos of the outside world. As leader of the governing council, Elise Farthington has one goal: to minimize Middlewich’s suffering in these waning days of humanity.

Resources dwindle, and Elise faces a new menace in the form of would-be dictator Grant Greene. Greene not only poses a threat to Elise but to the community itself, amplifying and exploiting conflicts that strain the delicate threads holding them together. When Greene proposes a radical new ration distribution policy, Elise must stop him from destroying the town’s egalitarian traditions while simultaneously preventing Middlewich from descending into civil war. To achieve this, she must unite the efforts of three disparate personalities and overcome the limitations of her own idealism to safeguard a game-changing new resource that could alter the town’s destiny and possibly that of humanity itself.