Leah, a teenage girl, lives with her father, sister, and two brothers on a remote island off the coast of an unnamed city. Leah was a child when her father shook her awake one night and ran with her and her siblings to a boat waiting on the shore. He had always said that the day would come when they would have to escape, as they were in danger from the corrupt government. As they drove away from their home, Leah heard a single gunshot, and her father told them that soldiers had just killed their mother. He took the children to this island, and told them that a war was breaking out in the city and that they had to escape. They began their life as fugitives. Every day, Leah and her siblings wake up early and do chores and manual labor around the island. Leah tells how her father had brought them there over six years ago, and how at the beginning of their time he would make occasional trips back to the mainland to pick up supplies. However, after coming back late from one trip covered in blood, their father said that the mainland was too dangerous and destroyed their boat. After that, he insisted that the children build a stone wall around their home. Despite her father not being able to get more supplies from the mainland, they have plenty to live on where they are, and had a peaceful life until her father started building the wall. After that, everything had gotten difficult and frightening. Cain, the oldest sibling, starts to question their father. Cain and his father get into a fight, where Cain accuses him of letting them all starve just to build a wall against something that they can’t even see, and their father hits Cain brutally with a trowel. The next day, Cain disappears. Leah and her siblings go down to the water and see that their old boat is missing, and realize that Cain has gone back to the mainland. Their father uses it as an excuse to work even harder on the wall. One morning, May wakes Leah up and points out the window. Leah sees two planes circling above the island, and she wakes up her father. He gives the children guns and ammunition and tells them that the war has arrived. Soldiers shine floodlights onto the property and yell that their father is under arrest. Their father tells them that they cannot give up, and he shoots the first soldier who comes over the wall. Leah realizes that May has wandered off, and she and Jacob run to look for her. Jacob is shot in the shoulder, and Leah and her father hear May yelling outside and they run out after her. Leah watches her father get shot in the chest. She raises her gun and aims at one of the soldiers, but is knocked unconscious. Leah wakes up days later in a hospital, and sees Cain and her mother sitting beside her. They explain that nothing their father had told them was true, and that there was no war. Their mother had been the one to call the police that night, as she was worried that her husband’s paranoid delusions would put their family in danger. Leah’s father had become convinced that the government was going to take away their rights and freedoms. Cain had suspected this when he noticed small things about their life that did not make sense, and that was why he knew he needed to escape. Leah and her mother take May to a day center for disabled children, and watch her happily singing and playing with other kids.