The hypercane strikes Amen and destroys the roof settlement, killing several residents including Jess, Beaumont, and their baby.

Father, Bix, Nonie, and Keller grab their emergency bags and barely escape the collapsing roof before it disintegrates.

Nonie leads the group through the flooding museum to retrieve a birchbark canoe from the Hall of Eastern Woodlands.

The group launches the canoe into contaminated floodwater, discovers Sergio's floating body, and paddles away from Amen for the last time.

The group paddles to the Cloisters settlement and is welcomed for the night despite some residents' initial wariness toward Keller.

Two men attack Bix and Nonie inside a ruined building during a storm; Nonie escapes but the men capture Bix.

Father is shot by the attackers while rescuing Bix, and Bix kills both men in the struggle.

Keller swims through storm-churned water to recover the drifting canoe, nearly drowning after inhaling dirty floodwater.

Father dies from his gunshot wound in his sleep, and the group buries him under an oak tree on Storm King Mountain.

Keller collapses with pneumonia and Bix's leg turns badly infected, leaving the group desperate for medical care.

Poppy lets the group into the Feral House, and medic Mary begins treating Keller's pneumonia with willow tea.

The group arrives at Hancock, where Esther treats Keller for pneumonia and successfully operates on Bix's infected leg.

Childs confiscates Keller's antibiotics and has Mary beaten and imprisoned after she defies his authority.

The group escapes Hancock under cover of a storm, and Darling kills the pursuing Childs with a knife.

Virginia, a Sally Ride crew member and friend of Esther, arrives at the farm and offers Nonie a place on the vessel.

A devastating hypercane destroys the rooftop settlement of Amen, forcing Nonie, Bix, Father, and Keller to escape through the flooding museum on a canoe from an Indigenous American exhibit. The group paddles across flooded New York and finds brief shelter at the Cloisters before continuing north along the river. A violent ambush at a ruined building costs Father his life and leaves Keller gravely ill and Bix's leg badly infected. The group seeks aid at the Feral House and then at the larger settlement of Hancock, where a doctor named Esther treats the wounded. When Hancock's controlling leader Childs reveals his oppressive grip on the community, the group escapes during a storm and is finally freed from his pursuit. They reach Mother's family farm and build a new settlement, and Nonie is ultimately invited to join the legendary research vessel Sally Ride.

The headline events of Nonie's dangerous trek from Amen to the farm.

Nonie recalls her mother comparing Amen's preservation efforts to the Hermitage Museum staff who protected art during the Siege of Leningrad.

Despite the danger, Father steers the canoe past his old family apartment on 93rd Street out of nostalgia as they leave Manhattan.

Keller hangs back from the Cloisters gate as the others approach, worried that his race could put him in serious danger.

Douglas shows the group the Cloisters' electrically lit scriptorium, a room dedicated to recording and preserving the stories of traveling survivors.

Keller tells Nonie about Angel losing a pregnancy during their difficult journey to reach Amen before the world fully collapsed.

Nonie recalls Bix leading her and Mano too far into the park while hunting, provoking a feral dog pack that kills Mano.

Keller draws a map of the route to Mother's family farm after the group stops to rest near West Point.

Bix and Keller return from the ruined building carrying the wounded Father while the canoe drifts away from Nonie in the storm.

After Father's burial, Bix picks up a paddle and begins helping row the canoe, quietly overcoming her deep fear of water.

The group exchanges their boat for a horse named Pumpkin and builds a travois to carry the feverish Keller overland toward Hancock.

Nonie encounters a domesticated dog for the first time in her life and is overwhelmed with fear.

A starving bear emerges from the woods near the road, and Mary quietly tells the group to let it pass undisturbed.

Byron leads Nonie to Hancock's icehouse jail during the storm, and Nonie frees Mary alone using a key from Esther.

Keller and Bix dismount the escape wagon and walk the final stretch to Mother's family farm on their own feet.

The farm settlement grows into a community with a hospital, reformed trade with Hancock, and Bix eventually marrying Byron.

As Nonie and her group make their way north, flashbacks and quieter moments reveal the emotional history behind their journey. Nonie recalls how her mother first connected Amen's preservation work to the defenders of the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad, while Keller shares the grief of a pregnancy Angel lost on the road to Amen. The tragic death of Mano in a feral dog attack casts a long shadow over the group's dynamics, particularly between Keller and Bix. Small but meaningful turning points accumulate along the route: Father's nostalgic detour past his old apartment, Keller's cautious hesitation at the Cloisters gate, and Bix's quiet personal victory over her water phobia after Father's burial. Their passage through new settlements brings both aid and danger, culminating in a daring jailbreak and a final approach to the farm on foot. The farm slowly becomes a genuine community, eventually complete with a hospital, trade connections, and new lives built by those who survived the journey.

The secondary moments and quieter revelations that illuminate the world Nonie travels through.

The survivors link into a human chain inside the museum and drag themselves to safety against the hypercane's overpowering winds.

Nonie recalls a storm surge that nearly swept Bix away, forcing the family to flee their apartment and take refuge at the AMNH.

Keller plays the game Animal in Mind to calm Nonie as floodwater rises inside the museum and panic threatens to overwhelm the group.

Nonie recalls her mother describing the Sally Ride research vessel and predicting that Nonie would one day become a scientist.

Douglas at the Cloisters openly criticizes the Amen community for turning away travelers throughout the years of the collapse.

Nonie warns the group about a storm approaching near West Point, but Father dismisses her instinct and refuses to stop.

A bolt of lightning illuminates two men hiding in the ruined building, revealing the deadly danger Bix and Nonie have walked into.

Nonie races through the dark ruined building alone and finds Father and Keller to alert them that Bix has been captured.

Father recounts the story of his first kiss with Mother as he lies dying, and Nonie notices Bix still has the gun she took from the attackers.

Bix and Keller embrace at Father's burial, their shared grief beginning to heal the long-standing rift between them.

Jared refuses to give Keller antibiotics, but Mary defies him and administers the medicine, privately deciding she will not return to the Feral House.

Nonie recalls Father revealing during a scavenging trip for medicine that Mother's kidney disease is terminal and she will not recover.

Childs arrives at Hancock's sick bay and declares that Keller must enter debt-based servitude to continue receiving medical care.

A guard spots Nonie and Mary escaping the icehouse jail, and Mary is forced to kill him so the group can flee.

Nonie sets aside both the Museum Logbook and her Water Logbook at the farm, ready to begin a new log on the Sally Ride.

From the moment Nonie and her family form a human chain against the hypercane's wind, the novel charts a series of pivotal choices and revelations that reshape their world. Nonie's mother planted a seed of hope by telling her about the Sally Ride expedition, and that dream sustains Nonie through harrowing moments, including Father's dismissal of her storm warning near West Point. The attack at the ruined building sets off a chain of tragic consequences ending in Father's death, after which Bix and Keller's long-held grief quietly heals their fractured relationship. As the group passes through the Feral House and enters Hancock, the true nature of each settlement is gradually revealed, from Mary's small act of medical defiance to Childs's coercive debt system. An escape under fire forces Mary to kill a guard, exposing the brutal cost of survival in a broken world. Ultimately, Nonie sets aside her logbooks and accepts a place on the Sally Ride, choosing to build the future her mother always believed she was destined for.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Nonie's transformation.